They’re getting about $4.5mil/yr now and negotiating with ESPN to probably land around $7-8mil/yr.
Here’s another article mentioning BYU
Brigham Young
There is only one flourishing football independent, and BYU isn’t it. The Cougars announced their intention to leave the Mountain West in 2010, and what followed has been a mediocre decade of treading water (and a near-drowning in 2017). Hopes of joining the Big 12 fizzled a couple years ago, and a lot of BYU’s drawbacks then will be drawbacks come future realignment. The program is free of Group of Five limitations, but also lacking its potential bonus — a guaranteed New Year’s Six bowl bid for the top team in that group. Scheduling is an adventure, as this year’s slate indicates: An opening gauntlet against Utah, Tennessee, USC and Washington, followed by a hodgepodge of opponents that make sense (Boise State, Utah State, San Diego State) and those that don’t (Liberty, Idaho State and UMass on successive November Saturdays).
AAC network money has caught up with them and they would benefit from being in the AAC for a few years before the next possible P5 expansion musical chairs,
Nope, SDSU. Is UNLV a better candidate in pretty much every way? Yep. Do we need to elevate them to become a PAC candidate over us? Nope. The PAC will never take SDSU too much Cali.
Byu is religious, Boise lousy academics those are 3 risk-free adds for our ambitions.
Kinda interesting how those negotiations aren’t wrapped up though. Seems BYU was expecting announce a couple weeks ago a new deal.
If ESPN would give them 4 for their non-conf and the AAC gives them 4 for their football share…that would equal what they’re expected to get at the least…and give them a better path to NY6/Playoff.
Conference already allows Navy to put their home games on CBSSports, don’t see why they wouldn’t allow BYU to do their thing as well. Even now, BYU’s games not on the main ESPN networks (1-2 a year) are broadcast on both ESPN3 and BYUtv…likely, for games on BYUtv, they could just move it from ESPN3 to ESPN+ while allowing BYUtv to continue to broadcast.
Or UNLV over Boise State. San Diego and las vegas are both bigger markets than Boise, Idaho and have had success in sports other than just football. Plus I’m pretty sure their academics are better.
Option 1- Add BYU only
Option 2- Add BYU + A Western package of 2 ‘West’ Schools
Option 3- Add one school bu tit would be a less desirable option than BYU. We’ve all discussed the candidates and the pros/cons of each.
Option 4- Add nobody
Option 5- Add none on football and add another basketball only program.
Option 6- make Wichita State play football. Is this even a possibility? And if not…why don’t they have a football team?
Having a start-up team that’s the third in Kansas is a worse idea than half of Conference USA and a handful of FCS programs. They were exploring adding football when we brought them in and I haven’t heard anything about it since. My guess is that we politely suggested that they don’t.
I’m pretty sure BYU wouldn’t be recommending an in-state team to elevate (that would be like SMU advocating on behalf of UNT… that’s not happening). I think the options BYU would prefer would probably be Boise, Nevada/UNLV, or SDSU.
And Boise would probably prefer the addition of a California school because of recruiting.