admitting that maybe there is an issue here?

Should BYU be able to beat USU as an independent? Of course. Should they be able to beat anybody as an independent? Of course. On paper it shouldn't matter what you are called. But, that's not really the point here.

The point is that independence isn't a black and white question. Indy is the result of a ton of factors. Many of which didn't go our way. But to sit back after nearly a decade of some of the most boring and passionless football and basketball and say that Indy isn't the issue is absurd. Of course it is, at worst it's a moderate part of the issue.

We uprooted everything and charted a new course with no road map. It was an experiment. The whole mindset changed. I'm not here to go into the details again, to talk about the dregs of the WCC and the weekly televised games in what looks like Junior high gyms, or the loss of century old rivals, or to touch on why a football program without a conference season might lose focus from week to week with random games on a schedule that don't culminate in anything.

Indy is a mindset. To pretend that mindset has no challenges when it comes to fielding a competitive, focused team each week is not being honest.

I could understand not questioning independence if we were still only 2-3 years into the experiment, but when we have nearly a decade of boring, passionless sample size I think it's at least time re-examine the issue without the blue goggles, or hurt feelings of P5 exclusion.