If you are a BYU sports fan, did you think this day would ever get here?

Starting on Saturday, the Cougars will finally get the chance to officially be a member of an elite conference as it will officially join the Big 12.

BYU is planning to celebrate in style, including the BIG Countdown Show Friday night at the SAB Practice Field starting at 11:30 p.m. (limited in person attendance) and the BIG Party from 3-6 p.m. on Saturday, which the Cougars are billing as the “biggest party ever” for BYU athletics.

Attractions will include activities for all ages including the Pro day challenge, Glambot, ziplining, create your own player card, hat customization, rock wall, golf simulator, kids coloring, water games, Legacy Hall display, face painters, caricature artists and more.

Jaren Wilkey/BYU

BYU also plans of having a picture opportunity and performance by the BYU football fire knife dancers, performance by Patrick and the Las Vegas Band and having on-site food trucks including The Pizza Bus, Iceburg, San Diablo Churros, Kona Ice, J Dawgs and Mouse Trap.

Considering how long this was in coming, it’s not surprising that BYU wants to savor the moment.

Consider the road that got the Cougars to this point.

BYU fans who remember of the glory days of the 1980s remember talks back then about how Cougar football should follow what Arizona and Arizona State did and leave the Western Athletic Conference for what was then the Pac-10.

With the flagship program of BYU football winning a national championship in 1984 and earning other national awards (including two Outland Trophies and a Heisman Trophy), it made sense for the Cougars to be considered among the elites in the nation.

Jaren Wilkey, BYU Photo

But BYU had some major obstacles that were too much to overcome, most notably geography, religion and politics. Its position as a conservative private university owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a region with few similar institutions put it on the outside looking in.

The Cougars did leave the WAC to create the Mountain West Conference in the late 1990s, but that new league never achieved powerhouse status and struggled to keep up with the technological and financial evolutions of college athletics.

The Mountain West did, however, provide a springboard for Utah and TCU, who benefitted from national exposure and the realignment dominoes in the late 2000s to get invitations to the Pac-12 and the Big 12, respectively.

When its two biggest football rivals left, it put BYU searching for possible roads to stay as relevant as possible in the new college football world (and, by extension, the rest of college athletics as well).

With no openings forthcoming, the Cougars took a bold step in September of 2010 and — with the help of ESPN and Notre Dame — announced they were going to go independent in football and join the West Coast Conference in its other sports.

The goal was greater exposure for BYU, despite challenges like scheduling, bowl ties and non-optimal kickoff times.

With the benefit of hindsight, it could be said that the Cougars achieved some of those objectives — but the financial disparity between BYU and other major programs became more and more challenging.

Former Cougar head football coach Bronco Mendenhall said in 2015 he didn’t see how independence could be viable long-term and eventually chose to take the same job at Virginia, which had major-conference affiliation in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

As recently as two years ago at this time, it didn’t look like BYU had any clear path to a major conference.

Then Texas and Oklahoma sent shockwaves through college sports by announcing they were leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC, setting off another round of toppling dominoes.

The Big 12 moved quickly to bring in the best programs it could to replace the Longhorns and the Sooners — and finally BYU, with its national fanbase and gridiron history, was the obvious choice.

The Cougars announced on Sept. 10, 2021, that it was accepting the invitation to join the Big 12 and since that point have been working to get ready.

The actual date when BYU (as well as other newcomers Cincinnati, Houston and UCF) join the Big 12 is not much more than a formality.

But it is a moment to celebrate for those who had seen all the ups and downs the Cougars have been through during the last 50 years.

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