for their TV deal. BYU has been able to nicely fill in the Thursday night/Friday night time slots which is something that I'm sure ESPN values. Also, they have typically been able to provide better home schedules than the average MWC team and it looks as if the home schedules going forward should be stronger than they were early on in the TV contract. In addition to that, if ESPN wasn't happy with the teams that BYU's been playing at home then why would they have picked up extra games in addition to what they're contracted to pick up every year in the contract - including not relegating any of the games to ESPNU last year?

As far as Bronco's "deadline" that you mention, I suspect it's more of him just seeing how challenging our schedule is then next few years and he feels as if this is a perfect opportunity for us to prove that we belong. He's likely of the mindset that performing well over the next 3 years should be good enough to get us inclusion in a P5 conference.