BYU Football: No, the Cougars shouldn’t schedule easier games

Two recent articles recommended that BYU Football should schedule easier games so that the Cougars can pile up more wins. They’re wrong.

In today’s world we expect instant results.

We have the internet at the tips of our fingers. We’re able to travel across the world in less than 24 hours, and we can even have fast food delivered to our homes. When something doesn’t work instantly we think there needs to be change.

Lately this has been true in sports as well. Ten years ago, a coach and his staff would have several years to turn around a struggling program. In today’s game, it seems that coaches only have a couple of years before fans demand change.

There’s no use pretending that BYU didn’t have a terrible season last year. The offense was dead, the defense couldn’t get turnovers, and the quarterbacks couldn’t stay healthy. They lost games that not even Ute fans saw coming.

But does that mean it is time for BYU to back down from the competition and play a schedule full of teams like UMass and Liberty?

Heck no.

Since BYU became an Independent, they’ve gone 13-22 against Power Five teams. That’s not necessarily something to be proud about, but winning 37% of games against Power Five schools over that time span isn’t terrible compared to other Power Five teams. You also have to look at the hurdles that BYU has that other P5 schools do not.

More than 70% of the P5 games that BYU has played have been on the road.  That’s on average 1.4 games at home and 3.6 games on the road every season. Every other team in the nation is only at about 55% on the road (including bowl games and neutral site games).

If we take out last year’s face-plant of a season, BYU actually has a 42% winning percentage against P5 schools. Also, BYU hasn’t played many easy P5 games. The Big 12 has Kansas every year for an automatic win. The SEC has Vanderbilt. The Big 10 has Rutgers and Illinois etc.

You get the point.

In 2017, 21 Power Five teams won 40% of less of their games against other P5 programs. With only 64 total P5 teams (not including Independents), that means that nearly 1/3 of the P5 teams last year matched BYU’s average record against major conference teams over the last 7 seasons.

Some of those teams are Ole Miss, UCLA, Baylor and Florida. Should these teams leave their conference so that they can have easier schedules?

Have patience

Fans and writers need to take a second to gain some perspective. Notre Dame had a span of 3 years (2007-2009) where the Irish lost at least 6 games every year. But nobody panicked over their scheduling, and Notre Dame is expected to win more than BYU. Nobody was saying it’s time for Notre Dame to schedule Valparaiso and Idaho State so they can get wins, and yet some are saying that about BYU after one bad season.

Before last season, BYU had gone to 12 straight bowl games. Only 10 other programs in the nation had a streak that long in that time period. Teams like Utah, Michigan and Texas weren’t on that list.

In the end, if BYU wants to stay relevant in college football, are they going to do it playing easy teams?

I’ll leave this question to help answer that.

Who does Utah play next year? Utah State? What about SUU or Weber State?

Still think getting wins is all that matters to stay relevant?