Final (maybe) Expansion Thoughts

First off, I think the Pac 10 would have expanded to 12 a while ago if they thought there were two teams in the Pacific region that they could add.

First a brief look at previous expansions of the Pac 10:
1959: California, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington formed a 5-team conference
1962: Washington State gets added for a 6-team conference
1964: add the Oregon schools to get the Pac 8
1978: add the Arizona schools to get the Pac 10
Safe to say the next expansion, as with the last two, will be two geographical equivalents, most likely to be rivals: possible combos include CSU, Colorado; BYU, Utah; Utah, Utah State; UNLV, Nevada

Academics: all schools in the Pac 10 receive over $40 million in federal grants for research. However, not all of the schools are highly rated, as the Pac 10 would have us believe. The University of Utah, for example, is in that same $40M club but ranks ahead of Arizona State, Oregon State, Oregon, and Washington State. The only other western Division I-A schools that fall into this $40M club are: Colorado State, Colorado, Idaho, Hawaii, UNLV, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah State. Hawaii, Nevada, and CSU are the only 3 schools in that list that have won a conference championship in the last decade in football. UNLV and Nevada are the only schools that have won a basketball conference championship in the past 5 years. Athletically, the good academic schools in the west fall a little short of Pac 10 standards.

On a side note: most of BYU's research programs are privately-funded, not federally funded, but I imagine they have a budget of well over $40M...either way, they are not a part of this club.

Comparing the post-graduate programs of the two teams involved in the most recent Pac 10 expansion (Arizona State and Arizona) with Utah and BYU, who I deem to be the most likely teams in the case of expansion:
Business: BYU tied with Arizona State, Arizona and Utah both unranked
Education: Arizona State, Utah and Arizona tied, BYU fourth
Engineering: Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, BYU unranked
Law: BYU, Arizona, Utah, and Arizona State
Medical: ASU and BYU do not have medical programs, Utah, Arizona unranked

Facts about the academic rankings:
ASU has the highest average ranking at 38th (does not have medical program), and places 1st of the 4 schools in three out of five categories
Arizona has an average ranking of 55 (but is unranked in 2 of the 5, which would lower their average...), but is not the best of the group in any of the programs
Utah and BYU share a similar average around 57.5 (Utah unranked in Business, BYU unranked in Engineering, and BYU lacks a medical program), BYU places first twice, Utah once.

Utah and BYU are not far behind, if at all, in academics when it comes to the most recently added Pac 10 teams.

Now, the Pac 10 is the conference of champions as well, so how do BYU and Utah compare when it comes to national championships:

BYU has at least 13 NCAA team championships that I could find record of (this does not include the 5 or 6 NCAA titles the dance team has won...). Utah has 21 that I was able to find in their records (this does not include any gymnastics individual national champions, of which they have a fairly hefty amount, only team championships).

Oregon State and Washington State have 3 each. Washington has 8. Oregon has 16. Arizona has 17. Arizona State has 22. California has 28. UCLA, USC, and Stanford are all up around or above 100 total NCAA championships. So BYU has more NCAA championships than 3 of the 10 schools in the conference of champions. Utah is also better than at least half of the Pac 10. They have done all of this WITHOUT BCS money!

Academically, there are better options in the region than BYU, but not [m]any better than Utah. Athletically, there isn't any competition from the schools that qualify academically. The no play on Sunday issue is a major obstacle with BYU. Perhaps that is why the Pac 10 has not expanded: the two most worthy candidates should be taken as a pair, but one of them causes too much of a headache. The Pac 10 will not be the first conference to expand because they will only do so when "forced" to...

Other facts:
Enrollment at Pac 10 schools is between 15,000 and 64,000. BYU has 34,000 and Utah has 28,000.
Football stadiums in the Pac 10 hold between 40,000 and 94,000. BYU's capacity is 64,000 and Utah has a capacity 45,000. USC and UCLA are the only Pac 10 teams that average a higher attendance than BYU. Utah averages a higher attendance than Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State. So attendance-wise, BYU would be in 3rd place in the Pac 10, and Utah would be 8th.
Basketball stadiums in the Pac 10 hold between 7,000 and 14,500. BYU's holds 22,000 and Utah's holds 15,000. In basketball, only Arizona (13,681) averages a higher attendance than BYU (13,383) or Utah (9,913). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that BYU would make up that 300 person/game difference if their conference schedule included UCLA, Arizona, Washington, etc. instead of TCU, Air Force, Colorado State, so they would likely have the highest attendance in the Pac 10 for basketball.
There are 8 public schools and 2 private, non-sectarian schools in the Pac 10. BYU is private, sectarian and Utah is public.