My Thoughts on the Conference Realignments
Utah jumped ship. Of course an avid BYU is going to point the finger first at the rival, but really the dream began to unravel when Utah bolted the Mountain West at the first possible opportunity. I think they'll find in retrospect that they've made a poor choice. The Mountain West was on the fast track to be the next automatically qualifying conference with BYU, TCU, and Utah all putting up strong numbers to make a case for AQ status. People's complaint is that we were too top-heavy. After the big three, there wasn't much to write home about. Let's be honest: it's a fairly valid complaint. SDSU, Wyoming, UNM, and UNLV haven't ever really had more than below average teams. CSU and Air Force have their flashes of brilliance but soon fade back into their relative obscurity. The MWC perhaps was doomed to marginalized, to forever be a footnote in the BCS.
That was before the MWC decided to go big. They managed to pull the Boise State Broncos out of the WAC and into the MWC. Now we had four legitimate year-in year-out contenders. Also, unknown to us at this point, but the MWC was also at work snagging Fresno State and Nevada to beef up our "middle-of-the-pack" teams. But what does this mean to the other AQ schools and conferences. Less money. A smaller piece of the pie. Harder recruiting. This great equalizer cannot happen. So they do the one thing that could pull out our metaphorically rug from under us: take the school with the strongest case from us and leave us in the dust, back in the margin of college football. Devious, but the Pac-10 pulled it with cunning that only a conference housing USC can muster.
What now for Utah? Sure, they're in an AQ school and they're going to get a whole pipeline of recruiting. The bigger slice of the pie starts next year guaranteed. But in the end, while Utah is a great program, they don't have the recruiting clout nor the funding to compete with Oregon, USC, Arizona State, and Cal every year. They're bound to be 4th or 5th every year, achieving a 2nd place finish maybe once in a while. They'll no longer be the big boys every year like they were in the MWC. Also, let's not even consider basketball. They're going to obliterated by Washington, USC, UCLA, and Arizona. If they'd stayed in the newly beefed-up MWC, they'd be top dogs of the MWC and swinging by a big bowl once every three years or so to make an appearance.
That brings us to the bold move made by BYU: independence. This came down to two things, at least for me. One is exposure. BYU now has BYU-TV and is prepped to make a showing on an international scale. Yes, international. I know for a fact (because I watched it) that BYU-TV is shown on SKY, a satellite network in Italy. This is a venue for the LDS church to make others familiar with our religion. The second reason is recruiting. BYU's primary recruiting pipeline is Utah itself. We've always had the edge over the U in Utah by the two facts that 1. we're an LDS school and thus have a draw for (at least some) LDS kids and 2. we have a better track record of getting kids into the NFL. The U does a great job recruiting as well, but their star recruits typically come from out of state. Thus, when Utah enters the Pac-10, they instantly get a huge upper-hand in recruiting by the promise of playing on the BCS stage. BYU can't really compete with that while staying the MWC and thus independence allows us to make similar promises because we'll be playing teams like Notre Dame and Texas on a yearly basis.
All-in-all, I feel like Utah has improved their short term outlook but will eventually regret their decision. I feel like BYU hasn't really changed much. Independence won't really change our game that much, unlike any Utah will tell you. Apparently, this is the herald of our program self-destructing. I can't really see why. Staying the MWC would have done that.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the realignment of college football. In the end, it's bad for the non-AQ guys and that's what saddens me the most.