I think BYU needs to at a minimum mix in some years where we only play 2 or 3 P5 teams.

With no conference championship to play for, our defacto answer for the question “what are you playing for” is Rankings.

Winning no matter who it’s against (within reason) raised rankings, this gets publicity, this gets recruits.

I’m not saying don’t play anybody decent. I think a lot of times BYU has the talent to compete with almost anybody. The issue is depth, oftentimes the drop off from our 1’s to our 2 or 3 deep players is drastic. When we play a murderers row of P5’s especially all in a row it beats us up, then our weakened team (guys playing injured and people deep on our depth chart) loses to crappy teams (last year is the perfect example).

I used to be all about let’s get as many big teams on our schedule as possible and it’s fun when we beat some. But this year has reminded me of the ‘96 season where I followed our rankings each week. Looked forward to the big games, watched every top 25 game I could with a rooting interest. That year we had the type of schedule i think BYU needs to have be our normal going forward.

My 4th grade son following this team, the rankings, the other top 25 teams passionately each week is what reminded me of my young self doing that in ‘96.

We are independent, the best part of that is deciding our own schedules and 2 or 3 P5 (and Boise) every year is the best way to game the system and give us solid chance to make some noise and be ranked.