PROVO — The BYU football team is off to a painful start to its season. After losing to Boise State at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Friday night, the Cougars dropped to 1-5 on the season, with a daunting road trip to Starkville, Mississippi, to take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

It’s not unreasonable to expect coach Kalani Sitake’s team to drop to 1-6 on the season going up against an SEC power, leaving BYU no room for error if it wants to finish the season with a winning record and reach bowl eligibility.

Coming off of a brilliant coaching debut last season from Sitake, it’s hard to fathom his team finding itself in this position, but a perfect storm of hardships has contributed to BYU’s worst stretch of football since 1970.

First, BYU’s schedule, as has always been the case as an independent, has been front-loaded. Outside of a scheduled victory to start the season against Portland State, the Cougars faced programs like LSU, Wisconsin, Boise State and rival Utah. Dropped in the middle was a trap game against Utah State in Logan.

For the Aggies, BYU’s trip to Maverik Stadium marked the only rivalry game on their schedule this season. For the Cougars, it was supposed to be a tune-up game, coming off of a bye week, before facing Boise State and Mississippi State.

Second, BYU has been missing a number of players at key positions, which makes winning difficult for any college football team. On top of not having either Moroni Lualu-Pututau, one of its most productive returning wide receivers last year, and breakout linebacker Francis Bernard, BYU has gone through unimaginable attrition at quarterback.

After losing Taysom Hill to the NFL this past offseason, BYU turned to Tanner Mangum, expecting him to build off his record-breaking freshman season. Instead, Mangum struggled to excel in Ty Detmer’s offense before getting injured late in the game against Utah.

BYU then turned to backup Beau Hoge, who appeared to suffer a head injury against Utah State, forcing Detmer to vacillate between third-stringer Koy Detmer Jr. and walk-on freshman Joe Critchlow. While power programs like Ohio State may find success dipping that far into their quarterback depth chart, a program like BYU can’t be expected to field the depth at quarterback to stay competitive with that many injuries.

While perfect health may not have changed the outcome of BYU’s season through six games, it’s not difficult to imagine BYU playing more competitive games against Utah State and Boise State had it had access to a full roster.

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BYU football notes: Sitake takes blame for Cougars' 5-game losing streak, offensive woes

“It’s on me. Our offensive issues are my fault. I’m in the mix with them and trying to get it fixed. It’s costing us a lot of issues on the other two phases," Sitake said.

However, more than injuries, and more than the schedule itself, money is responsible for the not-so-subtle undoing of BYU football. While the Cougars have very little option but to play a front-loaded schedule if they want to have the exposure of a Power 5 conference team without belonging to a Power 5 conference, it doesn’t allow them much room for growth during the early stretch of the season.

While even the best teams in college football may schedule fellow juggernauts in the opening weeks of the season — see Alabama playing Florida State on the opening week of the season, and Ohio State hosting Oklahoma in Week 2 — none of these premier programs play more than one top-tier program before entering conference play. Some schools like Washington, which started the season against Rutgers, Montana and Fresno State, avoid any tough games before conference play.

Financially, for BYU to remain appealing to its TV partners at ESPN, it must play these upper-echelon programs while trying to work out its own early season kinks without the benefit of guaranteed wins against lower-level teams. And when the Cougars suffer an inevitable loss playing against some of college football’s best, they are resigned to playing in a predetermined bowl game, with a less than top-tier financial payout.

Additionally, when nearly every other team in college football enters league play, the Cougars start their season over, competing for a league championship, regardless of how they fared in non-conference play. BYU is stuck matching up with lesser opponents like UMass and Fresno State in games that only serve to get it to bowl eligibility.

For BYU to best compete with Power 5 programs, it relies on the money it gets from its TV deal with ESPN to stay relevant. However, to get that money, it is forced to remain independent and play an early season schedule that could topple even the best programs in college football, taking the Cougars out of the national spotlight over the final month and a half of the season.

While the debate continues surrounding BYU’s lack of conference affiliation, and whether the Cougars should rejoin a lower-level conference, the quest for money has forced the program into a seemingly unfixable Catch-22.

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