BYU Football: Independence depends on ESPN

BYU Football has been Independent for the last ten years.

Last week BYUtv put together a really well produced BYU Sports Nation featuring “10 Years of Independence” and part of the episode featured BYU Athletic Director Tom Holmoe talking about the state and future of BYU Independence.

While Holmoe went a lot deeper then we’ve really seen him go about the topic in years, he left the door right open to the idea of whether BYU Football will still be Independent in 10 years.

Without covering the entire interview (see link below), Holmoe essentially said that every year he evaluates where BYU Football is and where it would be best for the Cougars in the future. He said that if a conference, G5 or P5, is the best option for BYU, then they will pursue that. If not, they will stay Independent.

There was one very specific part of the interview that got me thinking about the future of BYU Football. Co-host Jarom Jordan asked the question “Could BYU have gone Independent without the ESPN deal?” Holmoe responded immediately “No, there is no way…”.

That quick response made it very clear that BYU’s future in Independence relies heavily and in many ways solely on ESPN continuing to work with the Cougars.

To give perspective for those who don’t know, ESPN owns the rights to broadcast at minimum four of BYU’s six home games every season. ESPN also guarantees that the Cougars will have a bowl game if they are bowl eligible every other year. Many years, BYU makes an agreement to play in a particular bowl, but in years like 2020 ESPN helped get the Cougars into he Boca Raton Bowl.

What it sounds like is if ESPN decides to another direction, which is totally and completely possible in the future, BYU Football will join another conference as quickly as possible. However, while it is possible, I believe that the relationship between ESPN and BYU is very strong, especially with Boise State leaving ESPN and the PAC 12 working primarily with FOX.

BYU is by far the best and biggest market that ESPN can get into a late game slot. The Cougars tend to play at 10:00 ET which for fans is inconvenient, but for ESPN is a dream scenario. By having BYU in the Mountain Time Zone, it allows ESPN to have an extra game on their networks multiple times a year where they would otherwise either not have a game or get a small market Mountain West Conference game.

With ESPN as its media rights holder, 74% of BYU’s Football games since going Independent have been nationally televised, ranking the Cougars 17th in the country and No. 3 in the West just behind USC and Stanford. As a side note, an additional 9% have been featured on BYUtv which is televised nationally for free online and through many streaming services. The 83% would put BYU in the top five nationally alongside teams like Alabama, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.

I really recommend the BYUSN special and the link is here.