BYU To Go Independent In Football And Join The West Coast Conference In Non-Football Sports

But getting the exposure of playing 4 games a year on ESPN will help more than staying with Versus.

As an aside, I think Thompson is one of the worst commissioners. I’m sure BYU would have stayed if he had been willing to make some concessions. Instead he called their hand and found out they weren’t bluffing.

The Big 12 looks comfortable with 10 plus I don’t see a lot of their bigwigs there looking to go out of their way to add travel costs to Utah any time soon.

than the 2010 record wouldn’t factor too much in it. Obviously if they totally fell apart it would, but I think most people expect it to be a bit of a rebuilding year already. If BYU went 8-4 but showed a lot of room for improvement with more experience going into 2011, I don’t think that would hurt any tv negotiations.

Hawaii, Army, and Navy, Notre Dame

for jumping ship to 2 or quadruple their earnings. It’s about money, but more than anything it’s about exposure. My point is that Utah left a much stronger MWC than BYU did. Because Utah left, BYU is essentially FORCED to move out just to give them room to improve their lot in the BCS bids even if they have to take 1 step back(going independent) to move two steps going forward(joing the Big 12 in a year or two).

But commissioner Thompson said he woudn’t make any special deals to keep teams in the conference. Plus, the addition of Fresno ST and Nevada means their already meager TV revenue of 1.3 million anually would have to be split with 2 more schools.

Also, I’m pretty hesitant to assign motivation before hearing from them. Certainly the Utah move hurt, but I think people are sort of missing the exposure factor for the religious reasons. Vai Sikahema (former BYU player) wrote a column about this a couple weeks ago, and I found this interesting:

Not long after the sports programs at Ricks College were banned a decade ago, a couple members of the Board of Trustees met with the Athletic Dept staff at BYU to discuss BYU’s mission and answer questions and concerns. Naturally, someone asked if BYU Sports was also in danger of going the way of the Dodo bird. I’m told the answer was, and I’m paraphrasing, “BYU sports is second only to the efforts of our young men and women’s efforts as missionaries in attracting interest to the Church. If that changes, then we’ll reconsider if it’s worth having.”

All of us who ever pulled on the silks for BYU knows that. It was communicated to us at every turn.

BYU’s discontent with its meager portion of a TV contract that it clearly is the sole breadwinner for is not about money.

It’s about exposure.

I think the issues that he refers to here are a bigger part of it than some are giving credit for. Whether this is the right move to accomplish that remains to be seen, granted, but I do think this is a big factor.

and likely false.

Onward and upward. The MWC still has TCU and BSU, which was basically TCU and Utah in BCS value. Fresno and Nevada don’t really hurt things, and since BYU wasn’t as much of a contributor as Utah, TCU, or Utah, their loss isn’t as bad as it could have been.

USAFA is looking good for the long term, and both CSU and Wyoming are quite optimistic about their futures. SDSU has the potential to move upward in a hurry as well. It may be a bit late for AQ considerations, but the MWC looks to be a league that will fill that ‘middle of the conference’ gap they’ve had for a while.

What about the other 10? They could go 2-10 and still win the trophy.

We never whent to the playoffs since they had games on Sunday. Finaly our coach, his last name was Smyth, decided to enter the playoffs and just forfeit when they finaly had to play on Sunday. But all that was after I left. And since you seem to doubt I’m telling the truth, I’ll tell you Kimbal Kjar and Henry Bloomfield were probably two of the best players I played with, both of whom went on to play with the Eagles.

Will the WAC let them in on their bowl deals or the MWC?

If they can schedule top flight schools in late October and November then Ill buy it.

Both Utah and BYU play Utah St every year even though the Aggies haven’t had a good team for some time. No matter who benefits more from the game, it will still be played every year.

but you’re wrong if you think being on national tv doesn’t help recruiting.

Sure, they’ll still only be able to recruit certain athletes. That’s never going to change. But maybe they’d get a few more of those athletes that might have otherwise chosen to go elsewhere.

I don’t think any of us can say for sure what will happen. But I think the standards are a non-issue, here.

But there are plenty of players BYU recruits that choose to go elsewhere. So there’s still room for an uptick in the number that end up choosing BYU.