The Mountain West was clearly the best non-AQ conference. Hands-down. And if you're looking for competitiveness and making sure you find a school that can compete week in and week out, why wouldn't you take the better programs from the better conference?

Like BYU, BSU was dominant in the WAC. But it's one thing to beat Idaho, SJSU, NMSU, etc and then pull out an entire new playbook against the one or two big teams you play to go undefeated.

It's another thing to have to go and beat TCU, BYU, AFA, SDSU and still have to beat the one or two tough OOC teams.

No big boy conference would take a school that far away geographically and that much of a liability academically that hadn't proven themselves against tougher weekly competition.

No surprise they haven't been back to the BCS from the tougher conference. It's tough.

There's a reason BYU never got there. UU and TCU were the only schools capable of building a legit top 5 team. That's the difference.

More butts in the seats is pennies compared to the billions of dollars in TV revenue. It's something you measure from game to game and year-to-year, but it's too small of a metric to really matter for expansion.

I think the higher viewership is probably where there's an honest disagreement. Utah clearly had a higher viewership last year. The numbers are there.
BYU fans would've never believed that without empirical data -- because they tend to overestimate their fan base.

Just look at the ECUgame last year, 275K? That's not that massive. So the floor is pretty low.

The argument is, well UUs higher viewership is purely because of Utah's a opp. versus BYU's opp. Had BYU been playing the same opponents, Viewership would be higher because BYU has this massive fanbase. I disagree. I think Utah draws better nationally because they are more competitive.

While I agree a 5-0 P12 BYU would probably draw slightly more than a 5-0 P12 Utah team against the same opponent, that's your main point… But it's an irrelevant conversation, because BYU has never proven they can beat upper tier teams consistently. They wouldn't be 5-0 with that schedule? They didn't even belong on the same field with the Michigan team Utah had just beaten weeks before.

Where is the consecutive streak of wins over ranked teams like UUs vs Oregon, Michigan and Cal?

For every big win against a Nebraska, there's an embarrassing loss to Michigan, Oklahoma, then FSU/TCU, Miami-Oregon / A&M, etc.

All we've really seen from BYU over the years that they can consistently beat weaker teams. They did that better than Utah for decades. Credit deserved. Now that Uta has grown into a bigger program, post-2008 BCS, the Utes have shown they can beat the little guys consistently -- as evidenced by the 14-1 OOC record in their last few seasons in the Mountain West -- while still being able to beat big time programs.

That's a huge difference. That's why it's no surprise they have grown to compete well been a tough conference