BYU Football: Future games BYU would lose if they join the Big 12

BYU Football already has multiple games scheduled every season until the 2030’s.

Independence has brought one great thing for BYU Football above everything else, games everywhere. While November isn’t always great and September normally features four straight Power Five games, very few will argue that the Cougars’ schedule isn’t interesting every year.

In fact, every season, BYU Football plays at least eight to nine games against teams they did not play the year before. In fact, outside of Utah State, Utah and Boise State, the Cougars haven’t faced the same FBS team more than three times since they went Independent.

So what happens if BYU joins the Big 12? How many games will they lose? That is where things get complicated. First, we don’t know whether or not the Big 12 would be an eight or nine conference game league. We also don’t know if the Big 12 under a new system would play four straight non conference games or follow the ACC and SEC model where a non conference game is played somewhere in the middle of conference play.

My guess is that at least early on, the Big 12 is going to want to get more eyes on the screen which means for non conference games, probably mirroring the SEC where they play three to start off the season and then one randomly throughout the year.

The lists that we will go over are based off of what would make the most sense for BYU Football and likely work best with their schedule, again assuming that they joined the Big 12 in 2022 and played three non conference games to start off the season and one in the middle.