I grew up in the Seattle-area with no ties to BYU other than I belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the school. I never cheered for BYU, and in fact, I never even bothered to watch its games.

I grew up (and still proudly am!) a University of Washington fan, because that’s where my dad went. And if I’m being honest, I actually kind of loathed BYU growing up. I never understood any of the hype I noticed BYU occasionally get because I thought the success was merely a product of being in a bad conference.

I’ve since come to realize there really wasn’t a lot that was super impressive about the Pac-10, but I was biased.

Over the past several days and weeks, as I’ve watched the national media dismiss and disrespect BYU, I’ve felt increasingly annoyed.

Ryan Comer, Standard-Examiner

Not because I’ve suddenly become some massive BYU fan, although I acknowledge I do now want to see BYU do well, but because the arguments used against BYU are flatly absurd. They’re intellectually dishonest at best and evidence of discrimination at worst.

The main gripe against BYU is basically that it played one great team twice and got blown out both times. The argument continues that if that’s how BYU plays against the only great team it faces, then we need not see BYU in a playoff because it clearly has no chance.

Miami and Notre Dame

It’s an intellectually dishonest argument because Miami was put into the playoff.

Miami lost at home to Louisville and at SMU – two unranked opponents. Miami quarterback Carson Beck threw six interceptions in the two games combined, including four against Louisville. By what logic should we expect Miami to be able to compete against great teams if that’s how it plays against unranked ACC teams?

And by the way, that Louisville team that Miami lost to at home lost at home to California. How bad was California? California lost by three touchdowns to Stanford, got shut out by San Diego State 34-0, lost at home to Duke by 24 and fired its coach.

SMU also lost to California.

Because it lost to Louisville and SMU, Miami couldn’t even qualify for the championship game in the ACC, which was objectively the worst Power 4 conference and was ultimately won by a five-loss Duke team.

It should have been utterly disqualifying for Miami to not even be able to make the championship game in that conference.

Notre Dame lost at Miami and at home to Texas A&M. The loss to Miami should automatically put Notre Dame behind Miami. Thus, if Miami shouldn’t be above BYU, neither should Notre Dame.

Neither Miami nor Notre Dame have wins as impressive as BYU’s best win. BYU’s best win was against No. 15 Utah. Miami’s best win was over South Florida, a team only receiving votes in the AP Top 25. Notre Dame’s best win was over No. 17 USC.

Notre Dame also blasted Pittsburgh, which kind of looked impressive because Pittsburgh was ranked at the time, but Pittsburgh lost this season to West Virginia — a 4-8 team that finished the season with a 49-0 loss to Texas Tech. Hardly impressive.

BYU has a better strength of record and strength of schedule than both Miami and Notre Dame, and the latter isn’t even particularly close. BYU’s strength of record is nine. Miami and Notre Dame are at 14 and 13, respectively. BYU’s strength of schedule is 22. Miami and Notre Dame are at 45 and 44, respectively.

According to ESPN, the strength of record metric “reflects (the) chance that an average Top 25 team would have team’s record or better, given the schedule.”

You could perhaps think of it like the WAR metric in Major League Baseball.

According to ESPN, the strength of schedule metric is a “rank among all FBS teams of games already played schedule strength, from perspective of an average Top 25 team.”

So compared to Miami and Notre Dame, BYU had a tougher schedule and was more impressive against that schedule than Miami and Notre Dame were against theirs.

In no world should anyone think that Miami and Notre Dame are more capable of beating great college football teams, based solely on the results from this season, than BYU.

The Alabama conundrum

The other team in this debate was Alabama. Alabama became a three-loss team after getting dominated by Georgia in the SEC championship, but Alabama had a better strength of record and strength of schedule than both Miami and Notre Dame as well.

If Alabama couldn’t compete with Georgia, why would anyone expect Miami or Notre Dame to?

Yes, Alabama has the worst loss of any of the teams being discussed here, having lost by two touchdowns to a Florida State team that lost at Stanford and couldn’t even be bowl eligible in the ACC, but it also has a better win by far (at Georgia) than any victory Miami or Notre Dame accomplished.

CFP worse since expansion

The irony to all this is that there was hope that things would be better after the College Football Playoff expanded from four teams to 12. But we should have seen this coming because there are very few teams in the country that have a legitimate claim to being one of the top four. Ultimately, only one or two teams in any given season may feel like they got robbed, and even that’s not guaranteed every season.

Now, you have multiple teams feeling like they were robbed because there are a lot more teams that can say they are one of the Top 12.

I haven’t even discussed Vanderbilt or Texas and the cases they could make. Even Duke, having won the ACC, has a case to make when it won seven games against Power 4 conference teams. James Madison won zero.

I suspect something will change soon. Notre Dame has decided to throw a fit and not participate in a bowl game (Notre Dame will truly do anything to avoid having to play BYU). With as much criticism as the committee has received this year, I expect major structural changes.

Conclusion

A major reason I’ve come around to BYU over the years, and especially the last few months, is because BYU now has the schedule strength to legitimize its record. This isn’t a team feasting on UNLV, Colorado State, Wyoming and New Mexico. It’s a team that beat Utah, dominated TCU and won games at Arizona, Iowa State and Cincinnati.

BYU joined a conference people should respect and dominated it – outside of one team that happens to be one of the top four teams in the entire country.

The metrics back up the argument that BYU isn’t just a really good team, but that it had a more impressive season than Miami and Notre Dame.

BYU is no longer in the Western Athletic Conference or the Mountain West Conference. It’s time for the rest of the college football world to realize that and treat BYU appropriately. To not do so looks like corrupt discrimination.

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.