Is It Too Early To Consider BYU As A Fringe College Football Playoff Team?

PROVO, Utah – BYU’s 55-3 win over Navy raised a lot of eyebrows for how the Cougars dominated a Midshipman team that won 11 games last year.

The victory was the most dominant of the limited Week 1 contests and with Navy being projected as one of toughest opponents for BYU, odds of going undefeated skyrocketed per ESPN’s Football Power Index with the now road game vs. Houston gives BYU just under a 50 percent chance to win that game as its toughest.

Updated FPI projections for #BYU pic.twitter.com/kT6USACg8M

— KSL Unrivaled (@KSLunrivaled) September 10, 2020

This college football season is weird enough as it is with teams not playing, teams playing eight games up to 10, and games already being postponed or canceled after Week 1. Bowl projections are wonky as well with four conferences not playing.

This just leads to more opportunities for teams to move up the bowl pecking order all the way up to the College Football Playoff, and that includes BYU who with a good record should be able to get a better bowl opponent than usual.

How Realistic Is Playoff consideration For BYU?

Securing a more than dominant win got people to notice BYU in a new light. The schedule is not there but if the Cougars are able to run the table, then should they get consideration for the College Football Playoff.

ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit who called the game then went on SportsCenter after the Cougar victory and hyped up BYU claiming if they don’t lose a game then maybe they should be in the mix for the postseason.

“This is a good football team,” Herbstreit said. “I know we’re kind of looking at the score but –I don’t how much of the game you saw– they are a good team. They don’t play anybody all year. But they could be sitting there undefeated at the end of the year wondering, they should throw their hat in the ring in the [College Football] Playoff if we have one.”

The acknowledgment is there with lack of schedule strength for BYU, but if the Cougars win dominantly polls will move them up and if there are Power 5 teams beating each other up then the College Football Playoff committee should at the very least look at BYU.

KSL Sports Scott Mitchell asks the rhetorical question about if BYU should be looked at as one of the four best teams in college football.

If BYU plays really consistent and they have these kind of outings week in and week out and they stay healthy — the snowball just happens,” Mitchell said. “It’s just going to continue to talk, and the talk at the end of the season is going to be is, ‘this a playoff team?'”

"If #BYU goes through the schedule and wins convincingly… you do that and you will be in the [College Football Playoff] conversation." — @19scottmitchell pic.twitter.com/rcOZRHI76d

— KSL Unrivaled (@KSLunrivaled) September 9, 2020

If BYU ends up undefeated there will be at the very least some cursory look at the Cougars in the playoff. If the margin of victory is 20-plus or more points per game there could be a case by winning in dominant fashion.

Fewer Power 5 Teams Help Cougars’ Chances

Something else to consider is that the only three Power 5 leagues playing are the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 and almost exclusively amongst their conference members, so those schedules will be tougher and lead to more losses by playing a Power 5 team over some lower-level program that is scheduled as a victory.

How good would it look for BYU as the only undefeated team being compared to a two-loss SEC champ or even better for the Cougars, there are zero undefeated champions at all. That could lead us back to a 1984 scenario in which some felt that BYU’s undefeated record was not worthy of a national title due to who they played.

Mitchell has a unique comparison by saying BYU is like Forrest Gump who lucks himself into a boat full of shrimp just because he was out there on the water. If there is enough luck combined with dominating wins then who knows if the Cougars are going to get respect for a potential College Football Playoff berth.

“BYU is is an independent and maybe this that moment when Forrest Gump, you know, couldn’t get his boat out of the harbor and he was in the harbor and everyone else was out at sea and the storm came and it wiped everyone out and he was the only boat,” Mitchell said.

“If they go through the schedule, they win convincingly – and again, they’re going to have to do it. BYU does that and all of a sudden you’re going to be in the [College Football Playoff] conversation. There’s no Big Ten and there’s no PAC 12. So so there’s more opportunity for BYU to be considered to be a playoff team.”

It will take a lot of things to go the Cougars way to get into the peripheral vision of the playoff committee when they are playing Conference USA, Sun Belt, and the occasional AAC team, and on the other end each week it is Power 5 vs. Power 5.

2020 is a weird year for so many reasons, so why not continue that trend in a fun way that sees an undefeated BYU team politicking for a berth in the College Football Playoff.

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