I Was Adamant the Big 12 Should Add BYU. Writing this Article Changed My Mind
There are things that are more important than football.
To welcome the start of the College Football season, we at Case in Pointe are doing a multi-part series taking a detailed look at the Big 12 Conference. You can find all of the articles here.
I began by writing everything the Big 12 had done wrong recently.
To conclude, I was going to provide yet another example of this, pointing out that BYU is just about the ideal candidate across everything the conference cares about. It has a solid athletics program with a football team already considered Power 5-level by three other power conferences, a large and national fan base, and solid academics.
The University of Texas, long the biggest opponent of expansion, recently threw its support behind Houston, apparently for in-state political reasons. Oklahoma, the other major influence in the conference, wanted Cincinnati as well as BYU, and the two sides may compromise by leaving BYU out. I was going to argue that BYU was the best candidate, making this yet another example of the Big 12 making a foolish decision.
I try to make an effort to be thorough, and so I was of course going to note that the BYU Honor Code prohibits expressions of “homosexual behavior.” This became an expansion issue when a group of advocates and activists sent an open letter to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, asking the conference not to admit BYU for its discriminatory policies. Many Big 12 fans agree, and it is reported that officials in the schools themselves have serious concerns about the BYU Honor Code.
I was going to suggest the Big 12 Presidents pressure BYU to make changes to better protect LGBTQ students and visitors in exchange for expansion. But I no longer believe this is a reasonable course of action. In all of my reading and research for this article, the sole mention of this possibility was the suggestion that “there may be room to tweak policies at the margins.” And really, it was always a bit of wishful or lazy reasoning on my part. A religious school is not going to capitulate on internal policies based in sincerely held religious beliefs because of outside pressure in order to join a college football conference. So I can’t say that BYU should get the invitation anymore.
Even by the standards of a religious university, BYU’s treatment of its LGBTQ students is particularly problematic. The school pathologizes homosexuality, treating it as a condition or “problem” to be overcome rather than an identity, and creating feelings of “confusion, isolation, and pain.”
The priority for universities should be their students, not athletic programs. This is a particularly poignant moment for the Big 12 to keep this in mind after the recent revelations regarding the systematic failure of Baylor to protect its students, with coaches and potentially even the Waco Police Department ignoring accusations of sexual assault against football players.
There are some unflattering similarities between Baylor and BYU here. Baylor is another private Christian university, and it has an Honor Code which had a similar policy with regards to LGBTQ students as recently as last year. These Honor Codes have done real harm to the student body even aside from prohibiting students from expressing their feelings for those they love. Baylor’s Honor Code has been used to punish and publicly shame students who reported sexual assaults, discouraging an unknowable number of other survivors from ever reporting. BYU’s Honor Code has had similar consequences for victims of sexual assault, particularly for those that are gay.
Choosing not to invite BYU for an Honor Code largely identical to that Baylor had last year may seem to be a double standard; indeed, the LDS Church is perceived much more negatively than most other Christian sects. Certainly, I don’t believe that Big 12 Presidents have suddenly become enlightened about protections for LGBTQ students and women. But public pressure to hold new candidates to a higher standard is not a bad thing. We should not give BYU a pass because other schools have treated their students unfairly as well.
So BYU checks a lot of boxes as an expansion candidate, but there’s one big mark against it, one that I can’t look past and I hope the Big 12 community doesn’t either.
Who should they add, then? Cyd Ziegler at OutSports argues that Houston and Memphis are problematic candidates for LGBTQ students as well, because of policies in their respective cities and states. While these are real concerns, there is a material difference between a school with internal institutionalized anti-LGBTQ policies and those in jurisdictions that don’t offer sufficient protections. Schools can only change their own policies, not that of the broader state, no matter how much they disagree — just ask the University of Texas. The University of Houston, meanwhile, appears to be more LGBTQ-friendly as an institution.
Plus, while I personally don’t think conferences should just invite whatever football team has been hot recently, Houston just beat Oklahoma, the favorite to win the whole conference. So sure, they probably have earned it.
