If the school isn’t willing to do what it takes to get into a P5 conference (which, as we saw from the experiences of Utah and TCU, requires bending over backwards and being willing to sit at the children’s table for a while) none of the rest of that stuff really matters.

We can pat ourselves on the back all we want and tell ourselves that playing exhibition games and putting ~58k fans in our 63k seat stadium makes us better than Oregon State or more deserving than Iowa State… But at the end of the day, if BYU can’t find a way to get in (especially at a moment when the Big XII had just lost a couple schools, looked like it might lose 4 more schools, and was desperate to add programs with value), maybe BYU is not all that deserving after all.