Follow Up Poll - How many P5 teams should BYU schedule a year?

How many P5 teams should BYU schedule a year?

Lots. But let's make it look like a real P5 schedule. I'm fine playing Wisconsin if we also get a Northwestern or Rutgers. I'm fine playing Washington if we also have Oregon State or this year's crappy UCLA. Texas and Kansas. Bama and Arkansas. If/when we do get the call to join the P5, I want to already be used to what we'll deal with in conference.

redneckjedi wrote:

Lots. But let's make it look like a real P5 schedule. I'm fine playing Wisconsin if we also get a Northwestern or Rutgers. I'm fine playing Washington if we also have Oregon State or this year's crappy UCLA. Texas and Kansas. Bama and Arkansas. If/when we do get the call to join the P5, I want to already be used to what we'll deal with in conference.

True, not all P5 teams are created equal. Of course, it's hard to forsee how good a team will be in the future year you're scheduling them.



But, if we want a real P5 schedule, you're talking 9 or 10 P5 opponents a year. How wise is that for BYU with our recruiting limitations?

If BYU wants to join a P5 conference, we need to schedule and beat as many P5's as possible.



Schedule 2 toughies and fill in the rest with bottom half P5s.

Gunk wrote:

If BYU wants to join a P5 conference, we need to schedule and beat as many P5's as possible.



Schedule 2 toughies and fill in the rest with bottom half P5s.

I'm not sure how many P5 teams we beat has any effect on us getting an invite to a P5 conference at this point.

We need more Rutgers, Minnesota and Vanderbilt type of P5s and less Washington and Cals

1. Utah

2. Another PAC 12 team

3. A program from the other 4 P5s.



That’s plenty. Play BSU, USU and a FCS team every year.



The remaining 6 games should be against other G5 teams. This would give us a plenty challenging schedule, but a schedule where we can be successful.



I think it is much more important to finish 10-3 and ranked playing only 3 P5s than finishing 8-5 playing 6 P5s.

It depends on what your goals are. If all you care about is the W/L record, yeah, schedule nobody. If you want butts in seats and eyeballs on TVs and dollars in the bank so you can upgrade your facilities and coaching staff and recruiting and eventually start winning like the big boys, you've got to play the big boys. Hopefully you can get the P5 bottom feeders and beat them, and the P5 big boys when they are having a down year or you've got a good team and a good matchup to beat them. But do we really think we're selling out the stadium with MWC / AAC teams, with or without conference implications, and keeping that sweet ESPN deal with a steady diet of cream puffs? I don't.

redneckjedi wrote:

It depends on what your goals are. If all you care about is the W/L record, yeah, schedule nobody. If you want butts in seats and eyeballs on TVs and dollars in the bank so you can upgrade your facilities and coaching staff and recruiting and eventually start winning like the big boys, you've got to play the big boys. Hopefully you can get the P5 bottom feeders and beat them, and the P5 big boys when they are having a down year or you've got a good team and a good matchup to beat them. But do we really think we're selling out the stadium with MWC / AAC teams, with or without conference implications, and keeping that sweet ESPN deal with a steady diet of cream puffs? I don't.

Not only that, but a team that schedules nobodies will eventually settle to their level.

I think it's possible to underschedule yourself into irrelevance as well as overscheduled yourself into oblivion. The key is finding that practical, realistic happy medium for BYU.

I say as many as we can. What I hate is that the Minn, IA St., KS, IN teams don't schedule us. It seems mostly just the cream of the P5s play us. I would like a balance like what the P5 teams play. Some elite teams, some middling teams, and then some bottom teams (Rutgers anyone :)). And then fill any holes with G5 teams.

I would love agreements with the P5 conferences to play a sort or round robin type schedule with a few of the conferences.

e.g. I recognize that in any given year we may end up playing all the top teams in one conf or all for that matter as teams from the middle to bottom of the conference tend to have good years sporadically. That said:

2025 - 3 PAC12, 3 Big10, 3 Big 12, 2 AAC, 1 MWC (other than Hawaii), @HI (this gives us one extra game a year and a trip to play in front of all those Poly players and an annual trip to paradise!)

2026 - 3 PAC12, 3 ACC, 3 Big 12, 1 AAC, 2 MWC, @HI

2027 - 3 ACC, 3 SEC, 3 Big 12, 1 AAC, 2 MWC, @HI

and so on. I'm hoping that if Netflix and the rest get involved in college football, we just might be able to work a schedule like this. I don't see these companies killing the conferences, but I can see them only contracting with certain teams at certain levels and thus forcing the lower level teams to find better deals when it comes to playing on TV. (I base this on the rumors out there that are predicting that Netflix et al are going to go after individual teams and not whole conferences once the tv contracts expire in 2025). I think it could work out very good for BYU because we bring a whole lot of clicks!