There are teaching universities that churn out a lot of students and research universities that churn out lots of research.

BYU is a quality educational institution and ranks in the top 200 in a lot of categories like faculty awards, student admission test scores, national merit and achievement scholars.

However, BYU ranks low in other categories like endowment size, research spending, and PhDs awarded. In terms of PhDs awarded, BYU (96), BYU compares poorly compared to Cal-Berkley (920), Stanford (762), ASU (545), U of A (445), and even the U of U (304). BYU awards fewer PhDs than our old WAC foes like Hawaii (251) or CSU (203).

Citing research rankings could be a cover for excluding BYU over religious bias, but there are also aspects of academic freedom at BYU that run counter to academics' professional values.

My understanding is that it only takes one PAC university president votes against BYU joining the PAC to keep us out, and they can use any justification they want whether it's a matter of bringing as much revenue to the league than we'd take, or political topics like support/opposition of gay marriage, or plain old religious bigotry (as long as they don't voice it).

Being excluded stings a little, but there's not a ton we can do to force our way in. Playing good teams in the region is convenient and makes sense from a sports perspective, which is why we have a PAC teams on our schedule each year. It's that good football games aren't their only criteria.