Report: ‘No Chance’ BYU Joins Big 12 For 2020 Football Season

PROVO, Utah – You knew an outcome involving BYU to the Big 12 wasn’t going to go the Cougars way, right? But, hey, it was fun to dream for a little bit.

Matt Mosley from The Dallas Morning News wrote on Friday that he was told by a Big 12 Conference source that there is “no chance” BYU would be joining the Power 5 league in 2020.

.@BYUfootball to the Big 12 (this season) was a fun idea, but a conference source tells me there's "no chance."

— Matt Mosley (@mattmosley) July 31, 2020

The Big 12 Conference is the last Power 5 league remaining that hasn’t laid out their plans for the upcoming college football season amid COVID-19. Big Ten, Pac-12, and now SEC have adopted a Conference-only model. The ACC is playing a Conference-only schedule with one non-conference game. But it’s very possible the ACC scraps the Non-Conference game altogether.

Big 12 Presidents meet coming up on Monday and there was a thought that it would make sense for BYU to link up with the league to create an even 10-game schedule in a “conference-only” arrangement. That’s not going to happen.

BYU will still need to keep their eyes peeled to the Big 12’s decision coming up next week. If the Big 12 goes to a schedule that allows for one non-conference game, maybe the Cougars could utilize their partnership with ESPN to get games.

But that might still be a tall order for BYU to accomplish. Oklahoma scheduled a non-conference game on August 29th against FCS Missouri State. Missouri State’s campus is 302 miles away from Norman in nearby Springfield, Missouri. Might be tipping off the plans of the Big 12 to keep non-conference games –if they go that route– regional.

With the Power 5 leagues keeping everything pretty much in-house this fall, BYU is down to six games for the 2020 season. With zero of those opponents coming against Power 5 opposition. The last time BYU played a schedule that featured zero non-conference games against Power 5/BCS/Alliance teams was in 1975. LaVell Edwards was barely starting the passing attack at BYU. That’s how long it has been since BYU didn’t face a power conference team in a season.

After the Big 12 Conference, the dominoes to watch will then shift to Group of 5 leagues. Do they move to Conference-only schedules? If they do, BYU could be staring at the possibility of playing a schedule filled with home-and-home’s against fellow Independents Liberty, Army, and UConn.

2020 has been a crazy year. But even amid all the craziness, some things still go according to plan and that’s the Big 12 not having a seat reportedly at the table for BYU.

Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (Saturday from 12-3 pm) on KSL Newsradio. Follow him on Twitter: @Mitch_Harper.