sports. They are primarily great academic institutions and compete much more fiercely in the academic domain for research funding, professors, etc. Remember that these are the same kind of people who graduate students who oust CEOs for having been against gay marriage (see, e.g., the Mozilla incident). These schools would rather go indy or leave the conference altogether than associate with a school like BYU that would be perceived as a bigoted, closed-minded institution by many, if not a majority, of the schools' respective student bodies.

But it would never come to this anyway. The schools wield a lot more power within the Pac-12 than BYU will ever wield outside of it. And, contrary to what others are saying in here, the other Pac-12 schools are comfortable with the current setup and have absolutely no desire at all to add any other schools, let alone BYU. The fact that these schools may view BYU as a favorable matchup every few years or so means absolutely nothing. It is a geographically convenient matchup with a decent team that will help season resumes. That's the only reason they are scheduling BYU. It's not because they want to be associated with them on a more formal basis.