The second scenario is that the Big 12 petitions and gets approval to hold a championship game with only 10 teams. That means no expansion for BYU, BUT it may mean a Utah/BYU game every year. How, you ask?
By letting the Big 12 have a championship game with 10 teams, you change the rules in college football. You no longer need two divisions of at least six teams, and the winner of each division playing in the title game. For example, if Alabama and Auburn each have one loss, Alabama and Auburn play for the SEC title.
How does this affect BYU? Through the PAC-12. The biggest disadvantage of playing in the PAC-12 is playing 9 conference games. The PAC-12 has always had that one "crazy" loss every year (look at when USC was dominating, Oregon vs Arizona the last couple years, etc). Why? 9 conference games. The week in, week out grind. Also, the imbalance in conference scheduling (5 home games year one, 4 year two). It's too hard to have years when you only have six home games and five PAC-12 road games.
If you take out the divisions and division champs criteria for the conference championship game, you allow the PAC-12 to redo their league in such a way that gives them 8 conference games, and allows them to pit the two best teams together in the title game.
How? It's very simple. Right now, the PAC-12 plays 9 conference games because Stanford and Cal have demanded to play in LA every year. So, to get scheduling as fair as possible, you have 9 conference games. How do you fix it with new championship rules? Easy.
Step 1: Create three pods.
California POD: USC, UCLA, Stanford, Cal
Northwest POD: Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State
Desert Mountain POD: Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado
Step 2: You play every team in your pod every year. This allows the California schools to play each other every year.
Step 3: You play two teams from each pod every year. You rotate two teams every two years. For example, in year 1 Utah would play @Oregon, @USC, UCLA at home, Oregon State at home. Year two, you flip the home/away games. Year three Utah would play @Stanford, @Washington, Cal at home, Washington State at home.
Step 4: You play one additional team from a different pod every year. You simply line up the teams and rotate them every two years. This allows you to set the teams up in a way to ensure every team gets 4 home and 4 road conference games.
Step 5: At the end of the year, take the two highest ranked teams, play for the conference title.
How does this affect BYU? Utah, under the new rules, has 4 OOC games. Utah can have their A, B, C scheduling with BYU added on the end. Also, with Notre Dame and USC playing every year, you can place Utah vs BYU as the last game of the year to offset USC not playing a conference game. Let UCLA develop a rivalry with Colorado. This should also appease Utah, because they would have all December to recover from the game, avoiding the "BYU Hangover" (unless Utah was good enough to play for the PAC-12 title game, but lets be honest, if Utah is the best team from the PAC-12 and vying for a playoff spot, they should beat BYU easily).
A typical Utah schedule would look like this:
vs "C team" (FCS team)
@ "A team" (another BCS team)
vs "B team" (G5 team)
vs PAC-12 (California)
@ PAC-12 (Stanford)
vs PAC-12 (UCLA)
@ PAC-12 (Washington State)
vs PAC-12 (Oregon)
@ PAC-12 (Arizona State)
vs PAC-12 (Arizona)
@ PAC-12 (Colorado)
vs BYU
The biggest downside for BYU? If the Big 12 stays at 10 teams, then no P5 invite. But at least they could go back to a conference and shoot for a New Year's Bowl or stay independent and try that route.
Wouldn't it be great for a BYU/Utah game that the winner goes to the playoff (Utah) or New Year's Bowl (BYU)? There may be a way, and the Big 12 holds the keys to that path.
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