Oklahoma lost their post season this year because they had some players who weren't enrolled in their school on their rugby team.

Admissions give rugby players no special help. They have to meet the same academic requirements as any other student. Nor do any of the ruggers receive any scholarship money from the athletic department.

However, that does not mean no one receives any help. Since rugby is club sport, boosters can help as much as they want, and they won't run afoul of any rules. Jonny Linehan is the beneficiary of booster largess, for instance. It's because of that money, he cannot play football as a walk-on. He and the school would get into serious trouble. He would have to play as a scholarship player similar to Paul Laseki.

Although BYU may not support the athletes directly through scholarships, they do support the team in many different ways. They allow the rugby team to make use of their strength and conditioning equipment, to practice in the Indoor Practice Facility, and to play on South Field. They setup the field for rugby and provide the personnel and equipment to do their webcasts of home games. If you've watched any of the other rugby team webcasts from around the country, you will know that the programs emanating from South Field are so far above all the others, they aren't even on the same page as the others.

BYU also helps rugby by hiring Coach Smyth and at least one of his assistants as extramural coaches.

For BYU to take the next step and accept the rugby team as varsity (scholarship), they would pretty much be forced to accept the women's team as well since Title IX requires them to offer the same number of scholarships to each gender. That would require a fair chunk of cash, and that is unlikely to happen for a while.

BYU sports must be self-funded. They cannot receive any money from the student body in the form of fees or from tithing funds. So if you want rugby to go varsity, then pray we either join a P5 conference, or ESPN gives us a sizable raise in pay when our contract with them runs out in 2018.