game against a manageable opponent that are all tune-up games for conference. Only downside for us is that we don't have a P5 conference to start into.

That's the crock of this whole situation. EVERY P5 team has the opportunity to start this way and pad the wins column while working out the kinks and gelling before moving on to their "real" schedule.

BYU year in and year out has to START at the tough P5 conference-level portion of the season where losses are far more likely, and then has to schedule the bodybag games at the END, when they get no credit for them, and the wins don't do anything for team cohesion anyway.

Even if results were all the same, just think of how much more national attention BYU would have if each of their regular seasons the last 10 years occurred backwards - game 12 first and game 1 last. There are years we didn't even SNIFF the top 25 we'd EASILY be ranked given the easy games first, and then the heartbreaks to the tough teams at the end would be more easily forgiven by voters.

BYU has to be week-5-ready on week 1 every year. And they're downvoted into oblivion if they're not, then not given the same boost because the voters "know how good BYU is(n't)" by the time the payout portion of our season starts.

This year just shows how stacked the situation is against BYU's long-term success.