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If there was ever a picture to sum up BYU’s football independence it would have been last Saturday.

Here were the Cougars, lining up at LaVell Edwards Stadium at 8:30 p.m. on a November night playing one of the worst teams in college football. It was cold. It was snowy. And the game was over by the end of the first quarter with BYU leading Idaho 28-7. By halftime the Cougars led 42-7. The announced attendance was 61,091, but by most estimations there were no more than 40,000 fans at the start and probably as few as 10,000 by the end.

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Snow in the corners of the stadium as BYU plays Idaho (Tom Smart, Deseret News)

And what were those remaining fans doing? Building snowmen and snow forts. That’s right — while other schools across the country were playing meaningful conference games with their fans on the edges of their seats dreaming of a league title, or pulling off an upset of a rival or still playing to get to a better bowl — BYU fans were building replicas of Frosty the Snowman and Fort Douglas. Is this the vision BYU officials had when they declared their independence two years ago?

Well, after their boy Mitt took a beating on Nov 6, they needed to 'kick the dog'.

Independence was not a smart move. Independence works for Notre Dame because they have old, old rivalries with USC and Michigan State and a recent rivalry with Stanford, and because of their history they can usually put together a competitive schedule with big name schools. No matter what happens during the year, Irish fans can look forward to playing good football teams and the old rivalry games, and if they put together a good year, like this year, they usually get a BCS bid because of their name and the schedule they play. Late in the season, most teams are into the meat of their conference schedule. USC doesn't mind interrupting their PAC-12 conference games to go to South Bend, because it's a big time rivalry. But there aren't many big name schools that will interrupt their conference play to play an out of conference game against BYU, so BYU is left playing teams like Idaho late in the season while waiting to find out what crappy bowl they will be playing in in mid-December. They need to beg some conference to take them.

Edit: I looked at next years schedule and they are playing Texas, Boise State, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame. That's a pretty good schedule, and if they win all those games it's a good year. The problem is, when they lose all those games, they don't have a conference championship they can fall back on.

It will be interesting to see if they can win this week against another good team. BYU has already sewn up a Poinsettia Bowl invite on the strength of LDS attendance. Fill the seats and they shall come.