With its presumed returning experience, BYU football should be in the thick of the Big 12 title race when it joins the league next fall.
BYU football will end a 12-year run as an independent next year when it joins the Big 12 in 2023. Forget about the Cougars being “competitive” in its new league: there’s a good chance that BYU could be favored to win the Big 12 in its first year as a member.
The move to the Big 12, along with the additions of Cincinnati, Houston, and Central Florida from the American Athletic Conference, will help the conference actually have the number of teams that it’s purported to have in its name — that is if OU and Texas are in the SEC by then.
The Sooners and the Longhorns might still be hanging around for a couple more seasons, but that’s best left for another article.
It’s impressive work for a program not named Notre Dame to maintain a high level of competition as an independent in today’s college football landscape. There are seven FBS teams currently without a conference — and two more of these besides BYU will also join a league in 2023 (both Liberty and New Mexico State are set to join Conference USA).
Several of these independent programs seem to be hanging onto top-level NCAA by a thread, such as UMass and UConn. The Minutemen haven’t finished with a record better than 4-8 since joining the FBS a decade ago, and the Huskies are 10-50 overall since 2016 (although they were in the AAC until 2019 in football).
That’s a stark difference from the college football scene of a few decades ago. In 1984, the Cougars’ national title-winning season, there were three times as many independent programs as there are today. Among those 21 Division I-A (now FBS) independents were South Carolina, Syracuse, Boston College, and Penn State — all teams who have since joined a conference.
It hasn’t been all rosy for the Brigham Young football program as an independent in the past 11 seasons, but it’s been quite successful as of late. In 2020 and 2021, the Cougars have combined for a 21-4 overall record and finished in the AP Top 25 both times under head coach Kalani Sitake.
BYU has fared well recently against Power Five competition: the Cougars have beaten teams from the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, and of course the Pac-12 since 2018.
BYU left the Mountain West in 2010 after 12 years as a member; before that, the Cougars were a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) from 1962 to 1999.
Now that the Cougars are done beating up on Pac-12 teams (a 5-0 record vs. the beleaguered conference’s teams in 2021), why should they be expected to win the 2023 Big 12 title?
3. BYU’s road loss to Baylor
You build experiences based on tough losses. You often remember the pain of a gut-punching setback more so than the joy of winning — and that works beyond sports, too. We are psychologically built that way.
None of that is to say that BYU should remember a ton of positives from its 38-24 loss at Baylor in 2021, but there are a couple of important takeaways.
First, the Cougars now have a measuring stick for what it takes to be a Big 12 champion. Baylor would go on to win the Big 12 after this midseason home date with BYU. After Oklahoma State couldn’t punch it in from a yard out after four tries, the Bears ended the 2021 calendar year with its first league title since 2014, when it technically split the honors with TCU (Baylor had won the previous year’s league crown outright).
The Bears dominated the trenches against BYU, outrushing the Cougars 303 to 67 yards. Gargantuan, athletic defensive linemen like Salt Like City native Siaki Ika make Baylor a formidable foe to run against, and running back Trestan Ebner was one of six Bears who would go on to hear his name called in the 2022 NFL Draft. Against BYU, Baylor averaged 6.4 yards per carry en route to a convincing home win.
BYU had its positive moments, however. Quarterback Jaren Hall completed 22-of-31 passes for 341 yards and a touchdown to seven different receivers, proving that his impressive season exploits were not just achieved against lesser quality competition.
Hall finished the season with 2,583 passing yards, 20 touchdowns, and only five interceptions to go along with 307 rushing yards and three scores on the ground as a sophomore — and these numbers came after missing three games due to injury.
2. Wide-open Big 12 race
OU and Texas are relatively down. Well, for Texas, the team in burnt orange hasn’t lived up to the hype since 2009 and the Mack Brown days. Seriously — the team that seems to dominate recruiting news every offseason has finished with three losing seasons in that span and has finished as an AP Top 25 team just four times in the past dozen seasons.
As a program overall, OU is in an interesting position this season. The Sooners are led by a first-time head coach in Brent Venables after the sudden departure of Lincoln Riley to USC. The former OU boss took several high-profile high recruits with him to Los Angeles, in addition to star quarterback Caleb Williams and standout wide receiver Mario Williams.
OU still has plenty of talent on its roster after winning the Big 12 for six years in a row (2015 – 2020), but it’s feasible that the Sooners won’t immediately bounce back given all the roster and staff turnover. Fall 2023 is still a long way away, so consider how the OU fanbase might react if Venables struggles (relatively) coming out the gate in his first season as head coach in Norman.
Oklahoma State had a special 12-win season in 2021 thanks to a powerful rushing attack, a savvy quarterback in Spencer Sanders, and a rock-solid defense. That defensive unit, though, lost several sixth-year senior leaders and its defensive coordinator, Jim Knowles, who just took the same job at Ohio State before recruiting Cowboy standout safety Tanner McCalister to join him in Columbus. Senior Cowboy cornerback Jarrick Bernard-Converse transferred to LSU in the offseason.
Many expect the Cowboys and the Bears to be right back in the mix for this season’s Big 12 title, but they both lost significant talent from their surprise 2021 squads. It’s hard to count on both OSU and Baylor performing as Top 10-caliber teams in 2023.
The biggest threat to BYU’s Big 12 title in its inaugural season could be from another newcomer like Cincinnati or Houston. The Bearcats have had their share of media love and national attention after becoming the first Group of Five team to reach the College Football Playoff in 2021, but they also have several question marks after offseason departures.
1. BYU should return a lot of experience
BYU should have a load of experience returning to Provo for the 2023 season as the team begins play in the Big 12 for the first time.
There are always caveats with this, of course, and more so today with the growing ease for players to use the transfer portal and be immediately eligible for the following year. BYU won’t be immune from this in the next 12 months. There could always be a star player or two who decides to declare early for the NFL Draft and forgo college eligibility.
But let’s assume that the Cougars bring back their cast of returning players for the 2023 football season. It’s an impressive list of players that will likely rival any other aspiring Big 12 title team.
It starts with quarterback Jaren Hall, who took over the offense from the No. 2 overall pick from the 2021 NFL Draft, Zach Wilson. Hall accounted for nearly 3,000 total yards in 2022 while leading a BYU offense that ranked No. 17 in the nation with 452.2 yards per game. If the Spanish Fork, Utah product remains healthy this season, there’s no reason that he wouldn’t statistically rank among the nation’s 20 best passers.
The receiving corps is deep, too. Junior wideout Puka Nacua was the team’s leading deep threat last fall with 43 catches for 805 yards and six touchdowns. The Provo native played two seasons at Washington before transferring to BYU. Starting tight end Isaac Rex is classified as only a sophomore and already has 56 catches for 15 touchdowns and 643 receiving yards during his career with the Cougars.
Though he foreseeably won’t be eligible next year, reliable target Gunner Romney will be back for his fifth season with BYU in 2022 — he’s nearing 2,000 career receiving yards after starting with the Cougars in 2018.
Left tackle Blake Freeland has made quite an impression with BYU and figures to play a starring role during the next two seasons. You’d think that he’s unlikely to transfer away, given that his father played linebacker for BYU and his mother was an All-American with the BYU women’s basketball team.
Defensively, BYU should bring back several key linebackers in 2023 such as junior Payton Wilgar (56 tackles) and sophomore Ben Bywater. Bywater, a native of Salt Lake City, led the team in tackles in 2022 with 102 stops for the season.
Of course, there’s a lot of action that can happen within the span of the next year, but BYU figures to return a deep, experienced roster as it transitions to the Big 12 in 2023.