BYU draws WAY fewer viewers than Notre Dame.

If you look at the number of viewers per nationally televised game, BYU gets 1.06M and Notre Dame gets 4.34M. BYU is actually a lot more similar to a team like Boise State (that gets 0.89M).

Of course if you just look at P5 games, that's 4.84M per Notre Dame game, 1.58M average at BYU, and 1.55M at Boise

You have to stop comparing BYU to Notre Dame. We're a lot closer to being Boise than we are to being Notre Dame.

Beyond that, you keep talking about the math of 25M people in Southern California. There are 6.7M LDS members in the US. So even if all of them are potential BYU fans, that would put San Diego ahead of us, by your math. What's more than that, we know activity rate is only about 40% in the US, so we're down to 2.7M potential. Sure some inactive LDS may also be fans, but a lot of active LDS are fans of other teams - like Utah or Boise St.

In any case, those numbers still favor Temple (in Philadelphia) or San Diego St (San Diego) or San Jose St (SF Bay area) or SMU (Dallas) as bigger pies to draw from than from active LDS in the states.

You're hiding your disdain of Boise behind math that doesn't work for BYU either. And I DO think BYU is a great expansion candidate. And I DON'T think the Big 12 should take on Boise (or San Diego St). I'm just offended by the blatant hypocritical misuse of math, especially from someone who tells others they don't understand enough to be anything other than a fast food worker.