Cowherd: BYU Needs To Join Conference & 4 Other Ways To Improve College Football

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – With BYU football losing five games due to the Big Ten and Pac-12 going to a Conference-Only schedule, is it time for the Cougars to go to a conference?

Fox Sports radio host Colin Cowherd, the host of The Herd, has always been willing to share his opinions on BYU from time to time. (Remember the BYU-USA comparison?)

Cowherd weighed in on ways he would improve the sport that we all love by declaring his candidacy for president of college football.

One of Cowherd’s ways to improve college football is for teams to have only one “cupcake”/non-Power 5 team on a schedule. He then followed that up by saying, “Notre Dame, no more Independent. BYU? No more independent. Join a conference! No exceptions.”

Right now conferences make exceptions to their scheduling by classifying BYU and Notre Dame, two teams not in conferences, as Power 5 opponents. BYU is viewed as a Power 5 opponent by the SEC, Big Ten, and ACC.

Cowherd continued, “Can you imagine if there was an [Independent] NFL team? ‘They’re just Independent!’ Nah, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, maybe. No more. Join a conference. You get one cupcake, preseason-level game.”

BYU fans hearing that would love to see the Cougars in a Power 5 conference. But no league is knocking on the door to have BYU at the moment. As BYU head coach Kalani Sitake said last November when asked by a San Diego media member about being Independent, “Do you have a conference for us to go to?”

The Cougars who declared their Independence in 2010 have been playing the past nine seasons without a conference. BYU hasn’t publicly expressed any desire to move back to a Group of 5 league like the Mountain West Conference.

TV contracts start to expire in 2024 and many who cover college football believe that is when we could potentially see shifts in conference realignment once again.

But to Cowherd’s point, no one would be opposed to getting rid of games against the likes of UMass from the schedule forever.

Colin Cowherd and how he would improve College Football

Here are the four additional ways Cowherd believes College Football would improve.

• No Neutral Site games

BYU has played in some big regular-season games on neutral fields. But who would have been opposed to seeing the Cougars host Oklahoma in 2009 or playing in Norman for the first time ever? The same goes for BYU’s games against LSU, Missouri, and West Virginia. College Football is meant to be played on college campuses.

• Everyone plays 10 conference games

If this move happened, scheduling as an Independent for BYU would become tougher than ever. But uniformity in the sport is needed.

• College Football Playoff won’t expand beyond 4 teams

I disagree with this. Four has been the worst number in determining a National Champion. Either go back to two teams (BCS-style) or expand to eight. Having four in the Playoff has left teams disinterested in going to prestigious bowls in the New Year’s Six. Eight gives every Power 5 champion a bid and might also open some doors for a program like BYU.

• Only 12 bowl games

Downsizing bowl games would be great. I’ll watch all 40 or whatever number there are these days. But it’s not good football. No more than 20 bowls and college football’s postseason would hold a lot more significance.

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.