(12-09-2015 04:52 PM)jaredf29 Wrote: BYU is not getting added for oh so many reasons, but if you don't believe that, believe it when McMurphy constantly says they're looking East not West.
There are all kinds of rumors that swirl around. Rumors are easy to fake, but attendance is much harder to fake. Here are BYU's attendance numbers and ranks that I could find on the NCAA site. I also listed the next few teams that had a little less attendance than BYU:
2015 58,532
2014 57,141 32 WVU, UNC, NC St., Okie St.
2013 61,225 28 Kentucky, Ole Miss
2012 61,161 26 Washington, Oregon, Texas Tech, Ole Miss
2011 60,265 26 Kentucky, Oregon, AZ St, Oklahoma St.
2010 61,381 27 UCLA, Oregon, North Carolina
2009 64,236 27 Missouri, Illinois, Cal
2008 64,102 27 ASU, Washington, Illinois, Cal, Oregon, West Virginia
2007 64,497 27 Cal, ASU, WVU, Mizzou, Virginia, Purdue, Oregon
2006 60,524 26 WVU, Oregon, UVA, Washington
2005 58,204 32 WVU, Ole Miss , AZ, Mizzou
2004 58,475 33 Ole Miss, Oregon, NC St., WVU, Ttech
2003 61,501 26 Virginia, Pitt, Purdue, Miami, Oregon, UCLA
2002 62,176 25 Iowa, Arkansas, Vtech, Ole Miss, Purdue
2001 60,450 26 USC, UVA, Illinois, UNC
2000 60,619 25 Miami, USC, UVA, Illinois, Mizzou
1999 65,185 22 Purdue, Iowa, Mizzou, USC, ASU, Arkansas
That results in average attendance of 61,157 and an average rank of 27.19, through good years and bad. Even if BYU were totally awful at football, this kind of fan support would still get them into consideration of the Big 12.
If you want to look at basketball attendance, we were ranked #9 last year. In the last 44 years since the basketball arena opened, it has averaged 16,630.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86564...tml?pg=all
The combination of 60K+ for football and 16K+ for basketball is really hard to match, especially over decades. If the existing P5 schools are not getting that amount of support, given all the advantages they have, why would some team who never demonstrated such support in the past be able to build to that level once they receive the golden ticket to a P5 school?
You can even look at media market size. The Salt Lake DMM is ranked 34, Cincy is 36, Memphis is 50. Additionally, BYU is big in the Phoenix market (12), Denver (17), and Las Vegas (40). That is some serious penetration into multiple top 40 markets, and something that could make a Tier-3 combined network earn money without UT, OU, and KU.
I'm not saying the Big 12 are going to take BYU. What I will say is that if the Big 12 is serious about adding schools, they are definitely going to take a look at BYU. There is too much there to be blithely dismissed.