Today is July 12th and BYU’s monumental entrance into the Big 12 took place 12 days ago. With the number 12 being our guide, let’s look at the Top 12 reasons for BYU fans to celebrate BYU’s entrance into a Power Five conference.
1. Level Playing Field with Utah
As with most rivalries, being a passionate BYU fan also means actively rooting against your team’s nemesis, in this case the University of Utah. Utah has had a massive institutional advantage over BYU for more than a decade by virtue of the Utes inclusion in a Power Five conference. The prestige, money, and opportunity associated with their Power Five status has been the ultimate trump card over BYU when it came to high-profile recruits and athletic resources. As BYU joins the Big 12, Utah’s trump card is now off the table and the two rivals will finally be on roughly equal footing. While Utah fans will never publicly admit this, many of them are nervous about what the future may hold now that BYU’s on a level playing field.
2. Football Legitimacy
No matter what BYU football accomplished over the years as a member of the WAC, MWC, or as an independent, even their best seasons seemed to carry an asterisk at the national level. In 1984 NBC’s Bryant Gumbel said BYU shouldn’t be football national champions because they played against “Bo Diddley Tech.” The 1996 team was 13-1 and ranked No. 5 but were denied an appearance in one of the three Bowl Alliance bowl games. In 2001 the 12-0 Cougars were informed they would not be invited to a BCS bowl game. As BYU joins the Big 12 nobody will be able to doubt or diminish the Cougars when they succeed on the gridiron.
3. Big-Time Basketball
Gone are the days of BYU basketball playing in WCC venues that often looked like high school gyms. The Cougars will now be joining the best basketball conference in the country. Mark Pope’s squad will almost certainly struggle for the next couple of years while making the transition, but it’s more compelling to watch competitive losses against Kansas and Baylor than relatively meaningless wins against Portland and Pepperdine.
4. Recruiting
Ah, recruiting, the lifeblood of college sports. BYU has often performed like a 4-star program with mostly 3-star talent. The Cougars have traditionally struggled to land 4-star recruits with options to play at Power Five schools. The nation’s top athletes, especially LDS talent, can now call Provo home and get the exposure, competition, and backing of a Power Five conference.BYU’s entrance in the Big 12 should represent a step change in the caliber of talent they are able to successfully recruit.
5. Postseason Opportunities
BYU football no longer needs to be relegated to play in the equivalent of the ShamWow! Bowl in Eddyville, Kentucky against the third place team from the Sun Belt Conference. Kalani Sitake’s squad now has a legitimate path to the College Football Playoffs and other high-profile bowl games. BYU men’s and women’s basketball will be given multiple opportunities for Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins to solidify their NCAA Tournament resumes, even if they don’t win the conference.
6. Football Conference Standings
One of the worst aspects of football independence was it eliminated the intrigue and drama that comes with watching conference standings week-in and week-out. I grew up in the 1980s and still recall as a kid going through scenarios such as, “If Air Force beats Utah and Wyoming beats San Diego State, then BYU is only one game out of first place in the conference...” In addition to watching the Cougars, we also get the joy of monitoring the broader Big 12 conference standings.
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7. Budding Rivalries
While BYU has maintained its rivalry with Utah and to a lesser extent Utah State during independence, membership in the Big 12 means new rivalries can form. Rivalries bring passion and higher stakes to a couple of special games every year. The two most natural rivals for BYU are TCU and Baylor. Like BYU, both are private Christian universities. The Cougars and Horned Frogs have a past history from their time in the Mountain West together while BYU and Baylor have played some compelling games lately. Baylor has lured over former BYU football players and coaches, which introduces some healthy conflict. It’s fun to root for your team. It can be almost as fun to root against a rival.
8. Reasons to Care into November
Speaking of conference standings and rivalries…as an independent, there was often little for BYU football to play for after October. If the team wasn’t in the Top 25 entering November, then the end to the season was often rendered somewhat meaningless. One-off November tilts against UMass, Idaho State, and Utah Tech were sometimes barely watchable. Going forward, November should be the most exciting month for BYU football, as nature intended.
9. Money
BYU athletics is “self-sustaining and receives no tithing or tax dollars to run its programs”. When it becomes a full member of the Big 12, BYU will receive nearly $32 million per year from the conference’s media rights deal. When factoring in postseason and tournament revenue, that number is projected to be closer to $50 million per school. This influx of cash is a game changer for all of BYU’s programs.
10. Conference Security
Outside of the SEC and Big 10, the Big 12 is the most stable conference in the country. The Pac-12 cannot nail down a new media rights deal and could ultimately lose a couple of schools, if not disintegrate all together. The ACC is largely held together by an “ironclad” but largely unappealing media rights deal that runs through 2036. The Big 12, meanwhile, is led by a brilliant strategist in Brett Yormark and hasn’t skipped a beat after the announced departures of Texas and Oklahoma.
11. The Big 12 Cultural Fit
BYU players and fans will likely appreciate playing in a conference where sincerely held religious beliefs are welcomed and tolerated. Christian schools TCU and Baylor are doing just fine in the Big 12, and BYU should fit in nicely with the conference’s midwestern/southeastern culture. This will be a welcome change from BYU’s recent experience with the Pac-12 where the opposing school’s leadership had to issue apologies for either obscene “F— the Mormons” chants (Oregon, USC) or for disrespectfully mocking sacred religious ordinances (Stanford). BYU has found an ideal cultural home in the Big 12.
12. More Central and Eastern Time Zone Games
This one might be more personal for me, but I’m including it anyway. I was born and raised in Utah and graduated from BYU only to then move to North Carolina over 20 years ago. Y’all, those 8:30 PM Mountain start times are 10:30 PM on the East coast, and they are brutal! It’s tough to watch late Saturday night games that go until after 1:00 AM, only to then have stake council starting at 7:30 AM. The more Central and Eastern time zone games - and more reasonable bedtimes - the better!
The list of reasons to rejoice over BYU entering the Big 12 could go on and on. It was tough to limit it to 12, but each of these reasons will bring so much joy to BYU fans around the world. It’s a brand new day for BYU athletics.
Rejoice!
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