The bottom line is this - BYU very plainly has the best credentials to be invited. Haters will decry it - but everything from game attendance to breadth of sports offered, to having a clean program, to having a national following that travels quite well, puts BYU first.

Given that plain fact, there are other reasons that it has not invited and will not be invited. First - I remain convinced that many programs, including Texas and Oklahoma, see BYU as a program that, if given a toehold, could compete at their very level after a few years of recruiting on the national level. Do not discount the statement from Texas about how completely embarrassing their losses to BYU were - how unacceptable those losses were. These programs are unwilling to tolerate the possibility of a BYU ascendancy. We all know Utah pulled out of the BB series for this exact reason - to try to keep BYU out and down. We are naive to think that this stops at Utah. i think these very concerns are the exact reason the B12 announced that games against BYU would not qualify as an out of conference game against a major opponent. There really is no other meaningful explanation.

Second, we cannot ignore the reality of religious bigotry. In the P12 we are held in contempt because we are a church school. (I will only add that in addition to despising our status as a church school, the P12s selection of Utah worked to destroy an up and coming Mountain West - a conference that in BB and FB looked to be closing in on major conference status). In the B12 we face the disdain of Evangelicals for anything that bolsters the advancement of the reputation of the LDS church.

I have no doubt that Tom Holmoe is working ferociously to make this happen. But these are obstacles that BYU cannot overcome.

So - where do we go? If I am Holmoe, I take the current fight as far as I can. But, when BYU is finally left out, he has to work with the MWC to get back in. But he has to do it with the notion of making it into an up and coming conference - with the goal of moving into national stature. There is a huge shakeout coming. ESPN and others aren't getting the money out of their college affiliations they thought they were going to get, and college football on TV has become commodotized. The next round of TV money will, in my opinion, be greatly reduced. A handful of the B5 schools will continue rsking in dollars, but the demands on them to share more with lesser schools in their own conference will reach a cracking point. I don't know about Utah - but I know that CU in Boulder is spending money as fast as it is coming in, and if there is a reduction in TV money it will be in a lot of stress.

BYU should be working with the MWC to make it and the conference a lower cost but attractive alternative, that can sustain itself through the shakeout. Maybe it needs to build a new conference - but a number of the building blocks are in the MWC footprint. Core members would include SDSU (I believe the P12 will try to pick them off some day as well), BSU, CSU, UNLV (they have huge potential) and AFA. I would try for three more schools - based in California and Texas. Finally - and this would be radical - I would have a new conference rule - P5 teams will be played only on a home and home or true neutral cite basis. That woiuld result in only scheduling with lower tier P5 teams - and that would be just fine with me. I would turn the new conference ball games into more fan friendly games. Reduced TV time outs. More noon or 100 pm starting times. Whatever - a new and different sustainable model has to be built.