Two situations where BYU should accept an AAC invite

Conference stays at twelve but BYU gets a lot of influence

This would take a lot of cooperation and probably wouldn’t happen but if BYU was able to keep the best four games each season that they have from 2023 on, and then play the eight AAC games, then I would say that BYU should listen.

The biggest complaint that I have heard to this point is that there is no way that BYU is going to buy out their games with the schools they already have scheduled. In the near future, BYU already has full schedules which would be really tough on the buyouts. But after 2022 BYU can work around that pretty easily.

The proposal would be that BYU Football doesn’t join until the 2023 season (other sports can join in 2021 when UConn leaves) and has the option to back out if invited by a P5 by then. The second half of the proposal would be that BYU gets to choose the four games they get to keep each season through 2027. That would look like this:

• 2023 – Virginia, Utah, USC and Arkansas:
  • Buyout Tennessee, UNLV and Stanford
• 2024 – Utah, NC State, Wyoming and UNLV
  • Buyout Hawaii and Georgia Southern
• 2025 – Hawaii, Stanford, Minnesota and Virginia (Utah in week zero under the Hawaii rule)
  • Buyout: None
• 2026 – Arizona and Virginia Tech
• 2027 – Arizona
• 2030 – Baylor

This option would only require five buyouts and would keep most of the games on the schedule. If this option was presented before BYU they should listen and consider joining the conference because again we don’t know what will happen after the conference realignment and which teams will be left in the dark.

Either way it is a risk.