BYU to go Independent in Football

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Rumors about BYU football going independent were confirmed Wednesday. A source with Utah State University, familiar with the situation, told the Deseret News the move will be announced in the next day or two. KSL's Rod Zundel spoke with Holmoe last week on the possibility of making the big move. The Mountain West Conference has announced it has extended official offers to Fresno State and Nevada -- current members of the WAC. If a WAC school does go to the MWC or any other conference, it will come with a $5 million buyout. After Boise State left, the remaining WAC teams signed a five-year buyout agreement.


BYU would remain in the Mountain West conference in all other sports, but thanks to a Worldwide TV Network, its football program could profit handsomely. A source told Andy Katz that, “BYU wants to differentiate itself from Utah and by making itself the Notre Dame of the West, and it could become a national power.” just days after that, the Big 12, having lost Nebraska to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac-10, announced it had no plans to expand, another blow to BYU’s hopes of joining a BCS automatic-qualifying conference.

On July 16, BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, in a meeting with reporters, acknowledged that BYU going independent was “an option” the school had been looking at the past three years and had been carefully studying the past six months. As Director of Athletics Tom Holmoe explained recently, BYU has been reviewing, and will continue to explore, every option to advance its athletic program. For the Western Athletic Conference, Utah State and the other schools in the league, the move could be a dramatic change in the landscape of college sports in the western United States. If BYU were to make the move, the WAC would form a football scheduling collaboration with the Cougars that would help both the WAC and BYU fill out important late-season dates.