What you’re about to read is either bad news or good, maybe somewhere in-between, depending on your perspective, or it could be completely inconsequential news, if you roll a certain way.
The odds of winning major college football conference championships just came out of Vegas, and … how should we put this? … they’re not promising for BYU or its fans. Not that any of them thought the Cougars actually have a legitimate shot at winning the Big 12 in their inaugural P5 season, but there are always the dreamers, the devoted, the delusional.
Let’s power into this by putting it this way: According to oddsmakers, BYU’s chances of winning the Big 12 in 2023 are equal to traditional weakling Vanderbilt’s shot at winning the SEC. That would be the same Commodores team that last season found a way to beat Florida and Kentucky, but that also lost to Tennessee, 56-0, lost to Wake Forest, 45-25, lost to Alabama, 55-3, lost to Ole Miss, 52-28, lost to Georgia, 55-zip, and lost to Missouri and South Carolina.
Uh-oh.
The odds for Vandy sit dead last in the SEC, at 100-1.
The odds for Rutgers to win the Big Ten: tied at dead last, 100-1.
The odds for Stanford to win the Pac-12: dead last, 100-1.
BYU’s odds to win the Big 12 … yeah, dead last at 100-1, behind other league newcomers Houston (75-1), UCF and Cincinnati (50-1) and behind West Virginia at 66-1.
Compare, if we will and we do, Utah’s odds for winning the Pac-12, which rest at 5-1.
To be considerate of BYU here, this is the Cougars’ first go-round in a big league ever, and in any league for the better part of three fistfuls of seasons. It might — no, it will — take them some time.
But the fact that fellow league rookies Houston, UCF and Cincinnati are perceived to be substantially in better position, not great position, but better position, than BYU must be a kick to the Cougars’ onions, or at least to their pride.
Vegas doesn’t always get these pre-preseason odds right and they could yet change, but with so much cash on the line it’s their business not to be horrendously off base.
We shall see.
But BYU either has a comparative talent problem or a perception problem.
The Cougars had best hope it’s the latter, not the former. They can do something quicker about the latter. It will take more than a little time to address the former.
The next question is: Are all those BYU fans who have waited so long for a chance to compete in a P5 conference, the Big 12 in particular, the partisans so eager and excited to gobble up season tickets for the fall of 2023, going to get punched in the lips for all their emotion and effort?
Again, we shall see.
