For earlier additions in this series...

Part 1: http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=6366959

Part 2: http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=6369396

Part 3: http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=6383624

Through research and sources, I've compiled a pretty hefty collection of history regarding BYU and college football conference alignments. This is not an academic paper, and I'm not going to bother citing specific sources. Take it for what it is: A really long post on a message board. I hope you find it as interesting (and eye-opening) as I have.

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In Part 4, the MWC TV deal turns sour.  But, negotiations and conversations in Washington, D.C. set the table for the conference to receive AQ status in the near future.  The summer of 2010 sets off another chain reaction that dismantles the core of the MWC, and the fully story of what happened in the weeks leading up to BYU's independence announcement.

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You might say it was the golden age of BYU football on television.  The channel lineup was simple.  Distribution was at least adequate.  Production quality was decent.  We're, of course, talking about the years from 1999-2005 when the MWC had its original contract with ESPN.

Finding the games was simple enough.  If it was big, it would be on one of the ESPNs.  If it was small, it would be on KSL via SportsWest, or maybe at your local stake center.  If it was in between, you could find it on your local ESPN Regional affiliate - KJZZ-14 in Utah.  The only real access complaints came when a few less-interesting basketball games never got picked up, or somebody outside the Mormon corridor had to subscribe to ESPN's premium package.

In August of 2002, the Checketts family became players on the BYU television scene when Dave bought SportsWest Productions from Bonneville International.  It went pretty well.  SWP was slowly but surely became more economically viable, and its independence allowed for more flexibility when KSL turned down the odd basketball game during sweeps week.

So, it was no surprise when, in the summer of 2004, BYU and Utah asked Checketts to help them find an alternative to the bad deal ESPN was offering.  Checketts helped broker the deal with CSTV.  It appeared to be a match made in heaven.  The young, independent cable network loved the idea of getting a prominent Division I-A football conference to cap its lineup, and the money and exclusivity aligned perfectly with what the MWC wanted.

BYU officials were not shortsighted in backing the deal.  They were just too trusting.  BYU-TV had launched about four years earlier and had already been used for football and basketball rebroadcasts and live coverage of smaller sporting events.  ESPN had never had a problem with it.  CSTV said they wouldn't raise any objections.  Cecil Samuelson and Val Hale smiled, said thank you, and left Craig Thompson to finish working on the contract details.

The rest of the story is well documented.  Distribution was more difficult than anyone expected.  CSTV went through changes in both ownership and management, and the promises to BYU were never kept.  About nine months after the deal went into effect, Utah and BYU teamed up to retain an attorney.  This prompted some unrest with the other seven schools, and a quick phone conference was necessary before all nine institutions humorously released separate statements both endearing themselves to the conference and the TV deal, and supporting the decision to lawyer up.

Other than the neutral site loophole, there wasn't much legal recourse.  But, both BYU and Utah took silent note of release clauses tied to specific conference membership changes.

In the meantime, the BCS found themselves back on the chopping block.  In 2004, Utah's undefeated season gave Orrin Hatch the opportunity to start making a nuisance of himself.  The BCS boys tried to play it cool.  They scratched down some notes of the criticisms and left with a hopeful reply.

"The BCS said, 'Let us fix it,'" recalled attorney general Mark Shurtleff.

And, they did make some changes.  Beginning in 2006-2007, automatic qualification for the smaller conferences was made significantly easier.  Instead of a Top 6 finish, the criteria became a Top 12 or 16 finish.  The convenient advent of a fifth, separate BCS National Championship game also opened up two more slots for at-large selections.  At the same time, Notre Dame's exclusive deal became stricter.

Even the harshest critics of the system have to admit that these changes - though met with skepticism at the time - ended up being hugely important for the mid-majors.  If the original 1998 format had never been changed, Boise State would still be looking for its first BCS game.  There would have been no upset over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, because the Broncos didn't make the Top 6 that season.  Utah's upset of Alabama in 2008 might have never happened either.  With two fewer at-large bids, the Utes would have barely qualified, and likely won another meaningless game against the lower-ranked ACC or Big East champion.  And, of course, the ground-breaking BCS appearance of two non-AQ teams in 2009-2010 would have never come close to reality.

The BCS probably never anticipated the exact results.  Essentially the loosened qualification standards created a new "middle class" tier in college football.  There were still the "haves" and "have nots," but there was also a new burgeoning aristocracy of about six MWC and WAC teams that fell somewhere in between.

Predictably the BCS also made an addendum to its formula for selecting its AQ conferences.  Previously, the only consideration was the aggregate BCS performance of a league's top-ranked teams.  Starting in 2006, the BCS started calculating the overall performance of conferences from top-to-bottom.  The strategic objective of that change was never even debated.  Everyone knew what brought it on.

"We will look at a conference's overall strength," said then-BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg (who is now on the Pac-10's payroll).  "We're trying to get an assessment looking forward of the prospective strength of the conference."

For the next three years, things went quiet on the BCS controversy front.  Aside from a few provincial grumblings from individual fan bases, there were few widespread critics, and it looked as if the moderate changes of 2006 had been enough.  Then, in November of 2007, Brice McCain blew the coverage on Austin Collie and BYU beat Utah.

No one could have ever guessed how many problems that single play would cause the BCS.  Had Utah won that game, it would have finished tied for the conference championship and finished on nine-game winning streak.  It might have even gone to the Las Vegas Bowl instead of BYU.  But, the Cougars won, and that ended up meaning one thing - BYU started the 2008 season ranked in the Top 20, and Utah did not.

Cougar fans saw their team ride that preseason ranking as high as No. 7 in the coaches poll before September was even over.  Because of where they started, the Utes didn't match that ranking until deep into November.  It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see the potential scenario if the roles were reversed.  An undefeated team flirting with the Top 5 in September would have been in prime position to play for the national championship as the only undefeated team at the end of the regular season.  Pundits as far and wide as Lou Holtz had been openly talking about that possibility before BYU lost to TCU.  But, a slower start to the year meant that Utah finished the BCS rankings around No. 7 instead of starting there.

Utah beat Alabama, but Florida won the national championship.  Orrin Hatch had some more ammunition.  The BCS was in trouble again.  Six months later, the latest BCS boss, Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman, sat before an unfriendly Senate hearing committee. 

"The ultimate consequence of the BCS's refusal to acknowledge the outcries of football fans throughout the country may end up being intervention by the courts or the Justice Department," Hatch told ESPN. 

The message was clear.  The BCS hadn't done enough to fix itself.  Hatch now threatened the full force of the justice department.  But, the wise politician had learned a few years earlier that the BCS was willing to act when it was squeezed. 

A month after Utah's Sugar Bowl win, the MWC retained lobbying group Arent Fox and Craig Thompson made a brief two-day tour of Washington.  President Obama was newly sworn into office and had made public statements about his desire to see a college football playoff system.  The BCS can be accused of a number of things, but naivety isnt one of them.  With the heat being turned up again, some of the BCS aficionados started holding sidebar conversations with the MWC.

During conference meetings that summer, Thompson said it would take five years to change the BCS system to allow for greater inclusion.  It was not a speculative estimate.  ESPN had just signed a new agreement to carry the bowl games through 2014, and AQ status was determined only through the same time period.

In mid-November of 2009, a well-known San Diego radio host went on the air and said rumors out of Washington were indicating that the MWC was in negotiations to receive an automatic BCS bid.  As part of the deal, the conference would expand to 12 teams by adding Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada.  No one out of the conference offices would comment.

According to insiders, the negotiations were real.  The BCS, the MWC, and others had come together and had a rough draft for a specific sequence of events that would culminate in automatic qualification.  The events were to happen as follows:

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  Boise State would be invited to join the MWC in time for the 2011 season.  This would put the MWC close enough to meeting AQ standards that the BCS could justifiably offer them a Big East-type "exemption" without upsetting C-USA, etc.  This would also eliminate the only school outside of the MWC that the BCS considered a threat to compete for a national championship in the next 10 years.
  
  
• 
  
  The MWC would later invite Fresno State and Nevada, split into divisions and host a championship game.  The BCS was adamant about this.  The main intention of the requirement was to make the MWC's schedule more difficult.  It would also gut the WAC, making it extremely difficult for any of its remaining teams to become as dominant as BSU.
  
  
• 
  
  The Big East would gradually expand to 12 football teams over the next 3-5 years, specifically targeting the top C-USA teams.  This would gut the only other conference capable of producing another high-profile nuisance, while solidifying the Big East's football standing
  
  
• 
  
  When the new BCS contract was negotiated for 2015 and beyond, the Cotton Bowl would be added as a sixth BCS game.  The Cotton Bowl would be tied to the Big 12 champion, making the Fiesta Bowl available for the MWC.
  
  
• 
  
  The MWC would make a handshake agreement to include ESPN in TV negotiations once its contract with Comcast/CBS ran out.
  
  

A plan with so many moving parts is never set in stone.  But, Boise State was already expecting an invitation when college football rang in 2010.  From the BCS's perspective, it was the best option they had.  It would expand the pie before splitting it further, calm the senator from Utah, and deliberately hinder the possibility of future "busters" causing problems.

Leave it to the Pac-10 to mess things up.  On February 9, 2010, Larry Scott announced that his conference was formally researching expansion options.  Thompson immediately braced himself.  Some said the timeline for changes was beyond six months.  He knew it was much sooner.

"I think the timeline has to be a little quicker than that," he said.  "It's not going to be the middle of football season."

It took less than four months for the circus to start.  Some cynics of Texas say that the Longhorns never had any intention of going to the Pac-10.  According to them, the school was just posturing all along.  This opinion is without knowledge of history.  Texas and the Pac-10 had been linked for nearly 20 years.  What Texas did do is masterfully play the sides off against each other with every intention of taking the best deal.  Dan Beebe did enough to persuade the Longhorns at the last minute.

Had the Pac-16 really happened, the BCS and MWC would still probably have come together on a collaborative strategy.  Boise State would remain an MWC expansion priority, but the most attractive Big 12 leftovers would also be added.  This would virtually guarantee AQ status during the next go-around.  The remaining Big 12 refugees with any gravitas would be picked up by the Big East.  Initially Thompson and the presidents thought they could get Colorado if it was squeezed out of the Pac-16 by Baylor.  The day after Colorado accepted a Pac-10 invite, the MWC added Boise State instead.  It was also on the phone with Missouri and Kansas.

Once the Big 12 was saved and the Pac-10 only expanded by two, the BCS no longer had any need to deal with the MWC.

Only those who knew how close the MWC had come to successfully negotiating with the BCS could fully understand what Thompson was feeling when he said, "It's third-and-1 and you're going to pick it up, then you fumble the ball and someone returns it 85 yards the other way for a touchdown."

What Thompson didn't know was that Tom Holmoe quickly turned his offices into a war room.  The commissioner was tapped in enough to be relatively certain that the Big 12 wouldn't expand yet.  But he naively ignored the sudden and strange radio silence from Provo throughout the rest of the summer.

"I expect it's the last move based on comments of (the other commissioners)," he said after Utah finalized its move. "I don't know where institutions in our league would go.  Geographically, I'm not sure where they would go."

In the immediate aftermath of Utah's departure, there were some unhappy feelings at BYU.  Going back many years, there had been a handshake agreement between the schools to stay together.  Some said Utah couldn't be blamed for taking such a fantastic opportunity to improve its standing.  But, BYU knew what some didn't - mainly, that the arch-rivals were driving co-conspirators behind the potential collaborative BCS plan that had been just weeks from initiation.

But, it was done.  The president's office issued a short (and perhaps terse) statement, and the issue was never discussed again.  While BYU wished Utah had been more patient, Holmoe and Samuelson also knew there were options.  First and foremost, was to see where things stood with the Big 12.  For the better part of four weeks, BYU officials were talking with the main players in Dallas and elsewhere.  The problem was, no one had fully planned on Nebraska leaving.  Colorado was expected.  Missouri was anticipated.  But, Nebraska and the Big 10 had been meeting at isolated Midwest freeway stops in total secrecy until almost zero hour.

With Nebraska gone, the Big 12 North lost a lot of appeal. Arkansas was interested for a while.  But, with the SEC looking more and more comfortable, it politely started to back out of talks around mid-July.  Seeing things breaking down, Texas sent up a public trial balloon in the form of a Chip Brown tweet.  The hope was that the right kind of public reaction would encourage Arkansas to keep talking.  But, the brief message that the Razorbacks had "definitely put out feelers," was met with backlash among important people in Fayetteville.  The Texas legislature turned out not to be serious about forcing another Lone Star school in, and all went quiet on the Big 12 front.  With no good alternative, Texas and Dan Beebe elected to punt.  BYU was put back on the waiting list.

At roughly the same time, Holmoe gave his famous "options" interview.  BYU had strategically waited until the Big 12 talks had slowed down to say anything publicly.  Holmoe said the word "independence" twice during the interview.  What he didn't say is that he already had Karl Benson's direct line and home e-mail address.  He also had a direct line to ESPN's vice president of programming, Dave Brown.  Holmoe and Brown were longtime friends, and just a couple of years earlier had gotten together to make ESPN games against Oklahoma and Tulane happen.

The pieces fell into place fairly quickly.  ESPN agreed to everything BYU wanted.  With USU President Stan Albrecht leading the way, the WAC never hesitated.  Fresno State and Hawaii, in particular, were eager get BYU on the schedule regularly.  By August 16, President Samuelson had informed the MWC of BYU's intentions.  The news hit the media within 48 hours.  The rest of the league was stunned.  None of them had seen it coming.  But, by the end of the day on August 18, Thompson and the remaining eight schools had somehow persuaded Nevada and Fresno State to jump ship.

BYU froze for a few days.  Everyone had known the MWC's most likely reaction would be to pilfer the WAC, but they had hoped the newly instituted buyout would be sufficient prevention.  In the end, it was only good enough to keep Utah State from leaving. 

If anyone was guilty of back-stabbing, it was Fresno State.  Nevada was a slightly different story.  It had expressed hesitations all along, and purposely never voted or put its signature on anything.  UNR had always been clear that it wanted to be in the same conference as UNLV.  Before everything broke, there had been mention of including the Rebels and SDSU in the plan, but BYU refused.  Samuelson would not include any MWC members unless all of them were informed.  Still, the impression of the rest of the WAC was that Nevada was committed. 

Most insiders believe that Thompson somehow convinced Nevada and Fresno State that BYU would have no choice but to stay and take part in the new 12-team conference.  Otherwise, there was little incentive for the Bulldogs and Wolf Pack to leave the WAC.  It was a hasty move by all parties.

Shortly before Thompson went live with his late teleconference, Albrecht placed an eleventh hour call to the MWC offices.  USU knew what was about to go down, and it wanted to re-inquire about the invitation it had recently turned down.  The call was not returned.

It took a few days, but ultimately everyone at BYU agreed that independence was still the correct course.  A phone call was made to Jamie Zaninovich.  BYU didn't know exactly what to expect when it started talking to the WCC.  To its pleasant surprise, Zaninovich immediately presented a complete, detailed plan for how BYU would be integrated into his league.  It could hardly have been more agreeable.  The commissioner and presidents had done their homework.  All they had been waiting for was BYU to show some interest.  Holmoe and Samuelson were sold almost immediately.  Rumors are that Dave Rose was thrilled.

"We'd done a lot of the work already," Zaninovich said. "We had one meeting with (BYU) where we laid it all out, what we're about, our priorities, strategic vision and if this is what they were looking for, we'd be happy to have you as a member...We had built nine-school scheduling with different geographical models."

Behind the scenes, there were plenty of conversations going on with the MWC, but few of them included anyone from BYU.  The news had come as such a surprise, that there were unsettled feelings everywhere.  Even Utah was slightly caught off guard.  Mike Young and Chris Hill fully expected BYU to join the Big 12 at some point, but they were impressed with how quietly it had gone about formulating independence.

After Fresno State and Nevada accepted invitations, the conference waited for some response from Provo - and waited.  Thompson had seemed very certain that BYU would be persuaded (or forced) to stay once the WAC was cut off.  When BYU finally did respond, it soon became clear that none of them really understood why the school they thought they knew so well was doing this.

Between August 18 and August 31, negotiations between BYU and the MWC were concise, but colorful.  The presidents were willing to make all kinds of concessions - Utah State would be added as soon as the press release could be typed up, new revenue distribution could be put on paper ASAP, no more November trips to Laramie, etc.  The schools even mentioned moving the conference basketball tournament.  There were some hard feelings that Holmoe and Samuelson hadn't come to the table over the summer to try and work things out, however.  The thinking was that the other schools would have given a lot of concessions in June if Provo hadn't been so secretively trying to defect.

Then BYU said no to the laundry list of things the MWC was willing to give them, and people started getting angry.  From their perspective, you can see why.  As far as the other schools were concerned, BYU was doing this only to stay on a competitive field with Utah.  The MWC was offering them more money, and every other concession they could think of.  Holmoe and Samuelson still wouldn't listen and persisted in what everyone saw as an incredibly risky - possibly suicidal - reaction.  At the end of the day, they simply could not believe that BYU was only doing this for exposure.  As recently as late December, Thompson was still claiming that BYU was mainly doing this as a knee-jerk reaction to Utah leaving, it just wouldn't admit it. 

Once the negotiations boiled down to TV issues, BYU insisted that it wanted changes to the TV contract in black and white.  Thompson and the schools said they would promise to work on it in the future.  That wasn't good enough.  On Friday, August 27, BYU got an unexpected call from Comcast.  It raised a few sarcastic smiles.  BYU's lawyers had trying for years to get a proper dialogue going with the TV power brokers, and a lot of their calls had gone unreturned since 2006.  Comcast offered a few moderate concessions.  It was too late.  BYU was putting the finishing touches on its scheduling agreement with the WAC.  Independence was looking good again and Provo wasn't going to budge unless it got everything it wanted.

The press release went out the afternoon of August 31.  The MWC declined to even mention BYU by name in its subsequent official statement.  It did however include one curious line:  "Our Board of Directors' diligent exploration of options to advance the membership's objectives is ongoing. This includes conversations with our television partners to address issues of mutual importance."

Thompson had recently concluded preliminary conversations with Comcast about future TV coverage.  He had no good news to share.

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Coming in Part 5...

The final edition in the series.  A look ahead.  The BCS's relationship with BYU and other mid-majors going forward, possibilities for Big 12 expansion, the fate of the WAC and MWC, and the sleeping giant of 16-team power conferences.