also struggled in a home game against Portland St., lost at home to UMass, and got blown out by a 3 win East Carolina team. If you want to get respect the goal should be a good football team that can compete with other good football teams. Playing a crappy schedule won't make them a good team even if it helps them rack up meaningless wins.

For example, since 2016, using the teams in your example, LSU is 43-13 and Troy 39-16. Troy also went 1-0 vs. LSU in that stretch. If you only looked at Ws and Ls you could argue they are close to equal teams but nobody actually believes that. So if all of us would discount Troy's accomplishments because of the schedule they played, why would anyone assume other people would view things differently for BYU.

And for all the respect BYU is getting this year, they are still ranked behind two teams that haven't played, a G5 team, and 4 P5 teams that have lost a game, which should tell you if the PAC12 and Big10 had been playing there would be even more teams ahead of them. Playing a poor schedule always comes with a ceiling in terms of the respect a team can receive.