Mizzou coach: Independents should be forced to join a conference


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Count Missouri coach Gary Pinkel as a proponent of the nation's only remaining independent football teams — BYU, Notre Dame and Army — joining a conference.

In fact, he thinks the College Football Playoff Committee should force everyone to join a conference, or be made ineligible for the top postseason reward in the nation.

"You have some people that don't play championship games because now they only have 10 teams," Pinkel told ESPN.com. "I get that, but if down the road, you really want to do it right, I think, everybody's in a league and everybody plays in a championship game, ideally."

Pinkel told ESPN's Brett McMurphy that Notre Dame should be given "a year to join a conference," a mandate that some would believe should also apply to the other two independents as well.

The NFL, Pinkel noted, has set a precedent he believes should be followed in college as well.

"You don't have independents in the NFL," said Pinkel, a Kent State grad who previously coached at Bowling Green, Washington and Toledo before taking the Mizzou job in 2001. "Leagues are leagues. I think it's difficult to assess a team that's not in a league. It's nothing against Notre Dame, it's just my opinion."

KSL's Dave McCann talks with BYU director of athletics Tom Holmoe and head football coach Bronco Mendehall during BYU media day June 24, 2015, at their broadcast facility on campus in Provo. (Photo: Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)
KSL's Dave McCann talks with BYU director of athletics Tom Holmoe and head football coach Bronco Mendehall during BYU media day June 24, 2015, at their broadcast facility on campus in Provo. (Photo: Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)

Navy joined the American Athletic Conference as a football-only member at the beginning of the 2015-16 academic year, a move that many reports have linked the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is considering.

But attempts by the AAC, the current football-playing incarnation of the old Big East Conference, to lure BYU in the past have proven fruitless. Even Mountain West Conference schools Boise State and San Diego State have spurned the recently reformed league in recent years.

BYU and head coach Bronco Mendenhall have recently made known their repeated intentions of eventually joining a Power 5 conference.

BYU will face Missouri in a Nov. 14 game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

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