Why BYU Will Be Just Fine

This will hopefully be my last post on this subject - I promise. However, I felt it was important to sum up why BYU left, why BYU joined the WCC instead of the WAC, and why BYU will be in better shape as a football independent than they would have been as a member of the Mountain West.

The key to understanding BYU's departure is to look at what BYU loses by leaving the Mountain West. In FBS-level college football, programs are paid for three ways:

1. TV and other media deals
2. Stadium attendance
3. Bowl tie-ins

Consequently, schools choose conference affiliations based on who can provide the best media deals for their teams, who can regularly provide interesting opponents that will draw fans to the stadium, and who can arrange the best bowl tie-ins. With that in mind, what did BYU just walk away from?

TV and other media deals
As we've discussed several times in the past, the Mountain West TV deal is a dog, especially with Utah out of the conference. All games in all sports for all Mountain West schools are contractually obligated to be broadcast on only "The Mtn." - this means neither local TV nor national outlets can't broadcast most of the games. "The Mtn." is only distributed to roughly 8 million people; adding insult to injury, most of the ratings and advertising comes from Salt Lake City. As we mentioned in the past, half of that market walked out the door when Utah went to the Pac-10.

Meanwhile, BYU has access to its own channel (BYU-TV), which is distributed to over 40 million people and which is watched religiously by a much broader regional and national audience than "The Mtn." ever would be. Also, by extricating themselves from the exclusivity deal with "The Mtn.", they can broadcast higher-end games through ESPN or another national outlet, further broadening exposure and revenue. Best of all, they don't have to share any revenue generated from their media deals with the likes of Colorado State or the University of New Mexico.

Stadium attendance

BYU led the Mountain West in attendance and it wasn't even close - TCU was the next closest with just over half of BYU's average attendance. In fact, BYU's average attendance exceeds their stadium's official capacity. Needless to say, you don't achieve that by losing half of your fans whenever someone mediocre comes into the stadium. This means BYU doesn't really need the MWC to guarantee interesting games for their fans - as long as they get Utah and Utah State to show up (it won't be hard), they'll be just fine.

Bowl tie-ins

Though the MWC was attempting to become a BCS conference, there were no guarantees that it would make it through the probationary period, even if it replacing Utah with Boise State. Consequently, the only bowls that BYU could count on the MWC receiving on a regular basis were the preexisting non-BCS bowl tie-ins that the MWC regularly enjoyed. Last year, they were (payouts in parenthesis):

MAACO Las Vegas Bowl ($1,000,000)
San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl ($750,000)
New Mexico Bowl ($750,000)
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl ($600,000)
Grand Total: $3,100,000

Now, like most conferences, MWC schools share all of the revenue from all of the bowls equally - consequently, any bowl payout was split nine ways, and, if BYU stayed, would have been split eleven ways. So, assuming no MWC schools made it to a BCS game, the total bowl payout given to each team in the MWC would be nearly $282,000. Of course, if a MWC team successfully made it to a BCS game, earning the conference the corresponding $18 million payout, the total bowl payout would increase to nearly $2,000,000.

So, with BYU out of the MWC, how will it get into bowl games without any guaranteed conference affiliations? Surprisingly easily, actually, for one very good reason. BYU is one of the few mid-major programs in the country that actually travels well. In fact, BYU fans' proclivity for travel has led the Las Vegas Bowl to take BYU each and every year it got a chance to invite them because they sell out the stadium every single time. To put this into perspective, let's take a look at the attendance figures for each of the bowl games listed above (taken from ESPN):

MAACO Las Vegas Bowl (BYU vs. Oregon State): 40,018
San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl (Utah vs. California): 32,665
New Mexico Bowl (Wyoming vs. Fresno State): 24,898
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl (Air Force vs. Houston): 41,414

If you compare it to WAC bowl games, it still bears out (excluding the previously listed New Mexico Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl):
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl (Nevada vs. SMU): 32.650
Roady's Humanitarian Bowl (Idaho vs. Bowling Green): 26.726

The only bowl game involving a MWC or WAC team that had a higher attendance than the sold out Las Vegas Bowl was the Armed Forces Bowl, and it was held only 200 miles from an unprecedentedly good Houston team and its excited fans. Better yet, until BYU was invited to the Las Vegas Bowl, there was a serious chance that the game would have to be cancelled - attendance simply wasn't high enough to maintain it.

What this means for BYU is that, as long as there's an opening somewhere at a mid-major bowl, they will receive an invite. In fact, if the rest of the MWC isn't able to bring enough fans to the Las Vegas Bowl to maintain its viability, don't be surprised if the Las Vegas Bowl cancels their affiliation with the MWC and tries to woo BYU every year. Best of all, instead of having to split whatever bowl payout they receive with eight, nine, or ten other teams, they get to keep every last dime.

Given a choice between being guaranteed roughly $1,000,000 every year they have a winning record or getting $282,000 some years and just under $2,000,000 other years, this is basically a push. That it's only a push really says something about how much BYU needs the MWC and how much the MWC needs BYU.

So, let's recap. BYU's attendance won't be hurt by leaving the MWC, its bowl prospects won't be hurt, and the TV deal that it'll be able to put together for itself will be vastly superior to anything the MWC is willing to consider right now. That, in a nutshell, is why BYU left the MWC.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

With that out of the way, why the WCC instead of the WAC? That's actually fairly easy, too - the WCC is simply a better basketball conference than the WAC. Between Gonzaga, St. Mary's, and now BYU, it's a vastly superior basketball conference than Utah State and supporting cast. Bear in mind that Nevada and Fresno State were two of the best basketball programs in the WAC and they just left; without them, it's up to Hawaii or New Mexico State to make a halfway decent showing. As an added bonus, the WCC consists of nothing but private, largely religious institutions - if anyone will understand BYU's desire to avoid playing on Sundays, it will be them.