If BYU goes 11-1, then loses for a second time to Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game, they very well could be frozen out from the College Football Playoffs.
If that unfair disaster scenario plays out for BYU football this year, there will be many culprits to blame. One cause would be the naked pro-SEC bias from the CFP Selection Committee. Another could be the anti-Big 12 sentiment from sports networks that want ratings over everything else. There could be some flat-out anti-BYU bias in the committee as well.
But here's the element of the disrespect BYU is getting this year that doesn't get talked about enough:
BYU had the cards stacked against them due to flawed preseason rankings before they even played a snap this year.
The die was already cast to keep the Cougars out of the "big boys club" when the preseason rankings were released. Despite an impressive 11-2 season and No. 13 ranking last year culminating with a throttling of No. 23 Colorado in the Alamo Bowl, the Cougars began 2025 unranked. Yes, they lost quarterback Jake Retzlaff in surprising fashion before the season began, but Kalani Sitake's teams have always been about more than just one player.
After being ranked No. 13 to end last season, BYU brought back its entire coaching staff, plenty of returning starters, and a solid transfer portal haul. Despite that, BYU started 2025 ranked outside the Top 25. And that strike against them before the season even began has dragged them down every week for the last three months.
It took BYU going 3-0 in their nonconference schedule and beating Portland State, Stanford, and ECU by a combined 130-13 before getting ranked, and even then it was at No. 25. It has been an uphill slog for national respect ever since.
What if BYU had begun the season ranked No. 13?
Suppose BYU had began the season ranked No. 13. Let's say AP Poll voters decided that Kalani Sitake and his staff simply know what they're doing and they earned the right to begin 2025 ranked where they ended 2024.
Had BYU begun the season ranked No. 13, they would likely be ranked well inside the Top 10 today.
Here are the teams that were ranked from No. 1 to No. 12 in the preseason rankings -- so ahead of a hypothetical BYU at No. 13 -- that would have fallen out of their Top 12 spot by now:
Texas - Preseason: No. 1, Current: No. 16
Penn State - Preseason: No. 2, Current: Unranked
Clemson - Preseason: No. 4, Current: Unranked
LSU - Preseason: No. 9, Current: Unranked
Miami - Preseason: No. 10, Current: No 13
Arizona State - Preseason: No. 11, Current: Not ranked
Illinois - Preseason: No. 12, Current: Not ranked
That's right, seven of the preseason Top 12 teams have slid lower than the No. 12 ranking today. Just to illustrate the absurdity of preseason rankings, four of the preseason Top 12 are currently unranked, including three teams in the preseason Top 9.
So, had BYU simply started the season ranked No. 13 -- where they left off last season -- they could be ranked as high as No. 6 right now. After starting the season 8-0 with solid wins against Arizona, Utah, and Iowa State in the back pockets, BYU would have climbed higher than their No. 7 ranking when they suffered their first loss at No. 8 Texas Tech. They would have also built up weeks of national credibility as they would have been in the middle of Top 10 teams discussions for essentially the entire college football season up to that point.
But beyond the week-to-week rankings, by starting the season unranked, BYU just carried a "stench" with them all year. They are the outsiders. They are the lesser-thans. They are plucky upstarts with a cute story, but they don't really belong. They are the uninvited guests who annoyingly pushed their way into the party.
BYU is the awkward teenager who got banished to the "little kids table" for Thanksgiving dinner while the adults carried on in the plush dining room, all because of a horribly flawed preseason ranking system.
By starting the season unranked, BYU wasn't part of the national narrative until far too late in the season to really be taken seriously. ESPN and their pro-SEC homers on the network were simply able to ignore the Cougars for the majority of the college football season. They were invisible nationally until it was too late. By the time BYU was getting the respect it deserved, its fate was already sealed. They were a cute story by the time they rose to 8-0, but they were never viewed as a legitimate, serious contender in the College Football Playoffs.
For weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to start the season the national narrative became how deserving SEC and Big Ten teams and Notre Dame were for the CFP. BYU was ignored. The Cougars weren't part of the conversation until they forced their way into it halfway through the season. But by then, it was too late. The die had already been cast. Favorites had already been chosen. And BYU wasn't one of them.
Going unranked to begin the season doomed BYU's chances for an at-large bid to the College Football Playoffs before Bear Bachmeier even took his first snap.
If the Cougars go 11-2 with their only two losses coming to a Top 5 Texas Tech team and then gets bypassed for the CFP, we can surely blame many selection decisions that came late in the season.
But fingers also need to be pointed at the flawed stupidity of preseason rankings that increased BYU's degree of difficulty to essentially needing a perfect season just to get a seat at the table.