Big East Expansion: BYU Was Right To Break off Talks

Reports have been swirling around the Internet that BYU has broken off talks with the Big East Conference about joining as an expansion member.  The hang-up reportedly had to do with media rights and television revenue. 

While some members of the media are trying to paint BYU as being too greedy and arrogant, this turn in events is actually a smart decision on BYU's part.

Let's make it clear that BYU possibly joining the Big East was never about more money, increased national exposure or selling tickets to games. 

BYU would actually make less money by joining the Big East than it currently rakes in as an independent.

The Cougars would have several fewer nationally televised games per season if they were to join the Big East.

Home attendance for BYU games this season averaged around 60,000 fans per game, despite the fact that most home games were against WAC bottom-feeders and BYU was already out of the running for a BCS bowl.  BYU's home schedule increases in difficulty in the next few years, and more good teams are coming to play at Lavell Edwards Stadium.

That means the Cougars will most likely sell out the few thousand open seats they have for most games.

Even with the lack of sold-out home games this season, the Cougars still have the highest attendance this season of all the proposed members of the future Big East Conference.  They have the largest fanbase and possibly the highest average TV draw (although Boise State would do pretty well in that category if their games weren't stuck in obscurity on the MTN).

They also have, arguably, the strongest athletic department (which is quite well-off financially). 

The Big East had one thing and one thing only that it could offer BYU that the Cougars didn't already have: Automatic-Qualifying Status for the lucrative BCS bowls.

The Big East's AQ-bid was the only attractive quality that the conference had for BYU.  With reports in the past week of the NCAA possibly doing away with auto-bids, and the Big East's bid being under intense scrutiny even if AQ bids remain part of the BCS system, the Big East suddenly had very little to offer BYU.

So, BYU made some pretty hefty demands. 

If the Big East agreed to those demands, then BYU would have a pretty sweet deal, which would offset the uncertainty surrounding the AQ-bid.  If the Big East was unwilling to meet those demands, then BYU could slide comfortably back into Independence, knowing that it wouldn't be locked into a bad deal in the Big East.

BYU wasn't greedy or arrogant: It was smart.