Even with the gap that is growing, between P5's and G5's.. can see a similar gap starting to widen between BYU and the G5's that give the G5's an advantage over BYU.

BYU has too much working against it already as it is... we have the religious aspect in which we ourselves make it harder than it needs to be, by restricting who we hire and how much we can/can't pay... we have the honor code which restricts our recruiting options... we have raised our academic standards as well which is well above most... and that further restricts our recruiting options. Add in the social issues with LGBT and the other stuff that other people have against the church... and that alone puts us behind most G5's and P5's already.

Add to that the simple fact that college football is based on conference play... doesn't matter how insignificant, small, large or whatever the conference is... every team, but 5 teams, enters the season to win their conference. That was Lavell's goal, that was Crowton's goal... that was Bronco's goal... winning your conference is always goal 1. You can lose a conference game in September and still be challenging for the title in late November. A loss in September doesn't end your season. For BYU... we play to beat Utah and then whatever bowl game we have agreed to play in... by end of September... our goal is to win 6 games... we are insignificant in the college football world once conference play begins.

Our P5 games don't mean much at all... we are playing the part of spoiler.

There are 3 things that can make BYU significant as an Independent...

1. It gets us into a P5 conference... it's not going to happen people.
2. We get an auto bid if we are ranked in the top 15, to a NYD bowl game... this would be huge in my opinion... but as of now, we have no access at all to any NYD bowl regardless of our rank.
3. ESPN ponies up and pays us like they would a P5 team... again, sounds like that's not going to be the case.

Just getting P5's to play us is not a good reason to remain Independent.... it does NOTHING for our program, it hasn't helped our recruiting, it's not all of a sudden going to help either.