Would we have liked to have a perfect season? Sure. But that loss may have helped us more than it hurt long term.

BYU got a lot of credit for flying across the country at the last minute to play anybody, anytime, anywhere. The loss was only by a few seconds or a few yards, depending on your perspective.

If the Cougars had won, we would have had our second undefeated season in our history. But no national championship to show for it this time. The fact that we could play a perfect season and still not make the playoffs would have hung over BYU as evidence that 1984 was illegitimate and that BYU has now, finally, been properly put in its place as a lesser tier school. A school that goes undefeated but doesn't even sniff the playoffs is not a legitimate football program. There's no other way to look at it in the eyes of national CFB watchers.

With the changes coming to the conference affiliation and playoff access, a 2020 performance with an undefeated schedule would probably put BYU in the playoffs.

This is in the spirit of the post about BYU not getting enough credit for surviving the P5 era. We avoided getting permanent G5 stink on us through the last decade by leaving the MWC and establishing ourselves as Independent. And, with the loss at CC, we avoided being found unworthy of the playoffs in a perfect year. That may turn out to be a silver lining we didn't expect.