At the current rate of spread across the country, it's almost a statistical certainty that non-trivial numbers of CFB players will test positive for COVID between the start of fall practice and the end of the season.

So start walking through the logistics...

A player who has COVID obviously can't play. And, from the time they test positive they're subject to the same quarantine and recovery guidelines as anybody else. That means days or weeks of total isolation from the team. In addition, anyone who had contact with them around the time they tested positive and/or showed symptoms has to be quarantined. Presumably some of those contacts will eventually test positive, and so on and so forth. And the dominos fall...

It's totally conceivable that teams could lose large groups of key players for long periods of time during the season. That's just not a workable situation.

The truth is, it's very unlikely we'll be able to play CFB at all this fall unless the infection rate across the country significantly drops in the next few weeks. But, shortening the schedule and keeping it within your own conference increases the odds slightly. It allows for flexible schedules, quickly executable fallback plans, and a standard mode of operation between you and your opponents.

This is the decision that had to be made. Nobody is trying to screw anybody else over. Everybody is going to take a hit. If it ends up being possible to play at all (which I doubt at this point), BYU will find a way to get by, just like everybody else will.