Before we get started here, an advisory to all BYU football players: Do not read this column.

Do not.

Stop right now.

It’s not for you.

Turn off the lights and leave the room. Shut the door. Go lift weights or study film or do mental calisthenics or head to the fridge for a protein shake.

What follows is not for your eyes. It’s for the eyes of everyone else. Everyone who will not don a helmet and pads, who will not suit up for the BYU-Notre Dame game this week. It’s for the fans who will have to live and deal with what happens in the aftermath. And here’s a guarantee — stuff will definitely happen.

Is the coast clear? If you’re a BYU fan, and there’s a lingering player next to you, kick ‘em out. As the kids used to say, are they Audi-five thou?

OK, let’s hit the throttle.

Here’s the fact, Jack: No. 8 BYU does not have to beat No. 2 Notre Dame.

A win would be nice for the Cougars, but it’s a luxury, not a lifeline — with one attendant outlier, which we’ll get to at the end.

I know what you’re thinking. And I get it. But hold on.

It was Bobby Bowden who said, “I am not happy with moral victories. Those things are forgotten.”

If what the coach said is generally true, that doesn’t make it true all the time. Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium is an exception. Could be. Should be.

One of the goofiest parts of college football is that it relies so heavily on perception, not necessarily on the truth. And, in a whole lot of cases, the truth is tough to come by.

Teams are ranked high in polls and other configurations and, ultimately, granted postseason spots not necessarily because they are good, rather because those authorized to do the guessing think they are good.

The game is so big and fractured that it’s impossible for all the best teams to face off against each other. That’s one of the best rationalizations for a 24-team playoff, but even that likely would get screwed up on account of the major bias and opinion play that will always play in the process.

Back to a moral victory and the usefulness of it on this particular occasion for BYU.

Close is sufficient. Go ahead, suffer defeat on a last-second field goal. Get beat on a brilliant fourth-quarter CJ Carr touchdown pass. Have your heart broken in a one-point loss by way of a final Irish two-point conversion. What your team — and you — cannot abide is getting road-graded and laughed at by a monster score.

Obvious it is that the Cougars beating Notre Dame is their best route to making real the goal they’ve had in mind since before this season commenced — making the CFP and once there, doing some damage.

But if BYU looks good and loses to the Irish, that might be good enough — for two reasons.

The first is that even though Notre Dame has played a soft schedule to date and will go on against a weak slate, with a couple of exceptions — BYU and Miami — the Irish are thought to be among the country’s best teams. They have NFL draft picks galore and … well, they’re Notre Freaking Dame. They have had and will have every decent chance to make the playoff. If the Cougars play the Irish close, that could be enough to legitimize them, even in the view of a playoff committee that has sniffed, stiffed, and leaned away from them over the past two seasons, regardless of their regular-season record.

The second is apparent to everybody. If BYU wins the Big 12 title, no matter what happens on Saturday, it’ll get its invite into the playoff. Even if it makes it to the league championship game and loses, again, by a respectable score, added to the respectable showing against the Irish, it could get complicated, but that might be enough for postseason inclusion.

That line of thinking can be argued the other way, too, making an actual win over Notre Dame that much more important if the Cougars don’t win the conference title game. Particularly since there seems to be — no, not seems to be, there is — favoritism at work as it pertains to teams from the SEC and the Big Ten compared with teams in the Big 12.

Either way, because appearances are as important as they are, in victory or defeat, BYU has to look the part of a compelling and worthy postseason participant. As significant as Saturday’s game is, some say the biggest game in BYU football’s history, it isn’t a must-win. It’s more a must-win-the-evening-gown competition.

The outlier is partisan pride. That’s a whole other thing.

Given the back-and-forth between some of the more vocal portions of the fan bases in the run-up to the game, with Utah fans piping in for some reason as well, now maybe we’re talking must-win. Even a tight loss or tight victory among those folks is enough for the minimally triumphant to swing a verbal socket wrench into the forehead of the barely defeated.

One last bit of business: Utah fans who are rooting for BYU to lose and lose big to the Irish are out of your minds. You should be singing the Cougar fight song long and loud. It’s hard for you, I know. But if BYU were to beat Notre Dame and roll on and then come into Rice-Eccles in a few weeks and lose to the Utes, it would do nothing but boost Utah’s hopes for a higher ranking and higher consideration in postseason positioning.

OK, that’s it.

Turn on the lights, open the door and let BYU’s players back in the room.

Where were we? Um, yeah … the BYU Cougars have to beat Notre Dame on Saturday at LaVell’s Place. Absolutely have to, as though their lives depend on it. They have to play at the peak of their powers. There’s no space for dilly-dallying around. How embarrassing would a loss be? As Bobby Bowden once so perfectly said it: “I’m not happy with moral victories. Those things are forgotten.”

And the Cougars will be, too, if they lose.