BYU considers move to independent football

With Utah’s recent conference move to the Pac 10, BYU has been weighing its own options regarding their ties to the Mountain West Conference. Now that the school has an option to only retain independent status with their football program and play all other sports in the Western Athletic Conference. BYU has considered  independence before, but were held back by the prospect of scheduling all of their collegiate sports outside of any conference.

BYU has expressed a desire to work in a way similar to Notre Dame, whose football team is independent, but their other sports go through the Big 12. With participating in the Mountain West conference came airtime on the channels Versus, CBS College, and the Mtn. BYU, however, has a state-of-the-art television studio on campus that is going HD. BYU-TV has a wide reach and is offered on many satellite packages, with perhaps an even wider reach than Versus, CBS College, and the Mtn. Also, as an independent school, BYU will not have to share any proceeds from BCS bowls for which they qualify. Typically, once a school lands a bowl game, they must share their millions with their conference. However, when an independent school gets into a bowl game, they keep the entire sum.

Moving out of the Mountain West will place the BYU basketball team in the WAC, a very desirable situation for that conference. BYU men have gone to the national tournament 25 times, and have even won the series once. Other schools in the WAC are Fresno State, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada and Utah State. Not including Brigham Young, the remaining schools in the Mountain West are Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah, Texas Christian University and Wyoming.