BYU football: Future schedules filled with holes

PROVO — BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe responded to the question with a hearty laugh.

Do you have many teams calling you to schedule football games?

Once he finished laughing, he said, "No, we're doing most of the work."

And scheduling non-conference opponents, especially these days, is work. It's something Holmoe spends time on every week, without immediate results to show for it. BYU is losing future opponents faster than it can schedule them.

Last week, Washington elected to exercise a buy-out option and dropped BYU from its schedule in 2011 and 2012. Holmoe is trying to find a replacement, but it's not easy. The non-conference slate for next season is filled — Nevada, at Florida State, Washington and Utah State — but there are a lot of holes to fill beyond that. For now, the Cougars have three teams from the Western Athletic Conference — Boise State, Hawaii and Utah State — on future schedules.

As of now, after 2010, BYU is not scheduled to play a single automatic-qualifying BCS school. But it's not for a lack of trying.

"We have offers out there right now," Holmoe said. "We have openings and I'm talking to a couple of teams. We'll play BCS teams, any of them. None of them want to play us. The biggest thing is when you're talking about BCS teams that come from strong leagues, they have a strong conference schedule. BYU's a good team. If we got lucky enough to be the one team in the non-conference that they want to play, we're not a good balance for their schedule ..."

Holmoe explained it's not that teams are afraid of playing the Cougars, but they aren't a good fit for many BCS teams that are loading up on opponents from other non-BCS leagues or Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) foes.

Last week, BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall, who has the final say in scheduling, said he would like to set up games with teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten. Mendenhall specifically mentioned one Big Ten team — Northwestern.

While Holmoe won't say which teams he is currently negotiating with, he said he's talking to schools from those conferences. Mendenhall has also said he's interested in scheduling games with East Coast military academies — Army and Navy.