This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Tom Holmoe is doing what he can to keep BYU football from crashing into a burning heap.

Will it ever be enough? And if it is enough, will it be too much? And if it is too much … Oh, the humanity.

When the BYU athletic director announced that the school had completed its football schedule for next season by adding Southern Utah, a team it had never before played because … well, it brought attention to the good, such as it is, and the bad of being an independent.

The good is this: The Cougars' lineup of opponents is pretty darn impressive for 2016. At Arizona, at Utah, UCLA, West Virginia in Landover, Md., Toledo, at Michigan State, Mississippi State, at Boise State, at Cincinnati, SUU, Massachusetts and Utah State.

That's the best schedule BYU has ever faced.

And Holmoe deserves credit for putting it together. The only drag specific to next season is the home lineup isn't as enticing as the road schedule, although UCLA and Mississippi State at LaVell's Place is cool. And the old standard, November, typically the time of year when football rolls up toward its crescendo, features the Bearcats, the Thunderbirds, the Minutemen and, finally, the Aggies. Three of those four games are flat and two are nothing short of a waste of everybody's time.

Still, seven of those opponents couldn't have been much better — three Pac-12 teams, an SEC team, a Big 10 team, a Big 12 team, plus Boise State — and as an added bonus, two instate rivals. An eighth, Toledo, a team out of the MAC, currently is ranked and undefeated.

It's ironic, then, that Southern Utah — a team that will conjure no more than a yawn and a shrug and maybe a spat loogie from Cougar fans, although SUU also is playing the Utes next season and earlier this year nearly upset Utah State — now fills out BYU's greatest-ever independent scheduling effort.

All of which stirs questions.

Can Holmoe continue to build these kinds of schedules? Will he ever offer to the people who should matter most to the program — its fans — a home schedule that rewards them with a great football experience for the trouble of putting down their plates of ham sandwiches and getting off their loungers in front of the TV and buying season tickets? Will the back end of the season ever be scintillating? And if all of that happens, can the Cougars, you know, actually win?

The answers to those questions are: Don't know. Check back. Beats me. No clue. The responses lean more toward the negative, on all counts.

Then, again, if what Holmoe initially said and what Bronco Mendenhall told The Tribune a number of months ago is true, little of this matters over the long haul. The whole scheduling thing, the entire independence deal, is like fresh produce ripening — and rotting — in the hot sun. BYU, basically, is lining up luggage for debarkation off the Hindenburg.

"Independence is not sustainable in the long term," Mendenhall said. "I no longer feel that it is a desirable destination for us."

He gave the viability of that lurching predicament about three more years. "Anything longer than that would be really, really hard," he said.

Mendenhall also said the Cougars' best way off the burning dirigible and safely on the financial terra firma of a Power 5 league is via winning. Whether that's true or not, given the other obstacles BYU faces in landing intact, the winning will not come easy, or even be anybody's idea of a good bet.

In September, when the Cougars played at Nebraska, Boise State, at UCLA and at Michigan, they got away with a 2-2 record. Still, by the time they arrived at the Big House, they were spent and blown off the field. There are details, such as the fact that they lost their star starting quarterback against the Huskers, and had to pick up from there, but if you're trying to show that you are an asset to a power league, sympathy is in short supply. How's it going to turn out next year?

Nobody knows if BYU — whether it wins or not — will ever make it to a P5, to a place it belongs.

But presently it is stuck in a world without the building competitive excitement and recruiting advantages that big conference membership brings, a world where it must throw together the best schedule it can and hope it doesn't bore everyone to death on the soft weeks — Wagner, hello — and doesn't get buried on the hard ones.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.