June 16, 2010.

It’s a date that while largely forgotten by most Utah fans, should be celebrated in the same way that Independence Day or Pioneer Day are lauded in the Beehive State. That Wednesday morning, the University of Utah got the news that would forever change the university’s athletic and academic course. Because that was the day that Utah was formally invited to join the Pac-12.

However, Utah’s journey to the Pac-12 began long before that Wednesday in June. The initial seeds for the school joining the illustrious conference were sown years before, by coaches and players in athletic competition, by forward-thinking administrators looking to position Utah for bigger and better things, and by market forces evolving to fit a new media landscape.

Eight years after the fact, Utah’s move to the Conference of Champions has had a far greater impact on the balance of athletic power in the state of Utah, the academic prowess of the university, and the school’s impact on the greater Salt Lake City community than anyone could have imagined. This is the story of those harrowing weeks and months leading up to the June announcement, as told by those that were most instrumental in making it happen: recently retired Utah athletic director Chris Hill, former Utah president (and current president of Texas A&M) Michael Young, and Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott.

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

The conference realignment drama of 2010 was the greatest sea change in the history of college football and it was driven by the factor that controls seemingly every aspect of college athletics today – television contracts. As conferences eyed what was beginning to look like astronomical sums of money involved in the next round of TV rights negotiations, traditional approaches to how they did business went out the window. It was in that atmosphere where realignment plans began to take shape, as conferences looked to lock in larger geographic footprints – and the television markets that came with them – in order to demand the greatest number possible from the TV networks.

Larry Scott: The context for considering expansion was upcoming media negotiations we were going to be having in 2011. As I had come into the conference in 2009, a lot of my focus was a new strategic plan and a new direction for the conference that was going to be accretive and provide more value and more interest in the Pac-12 as we were going to be approaching media companies given that the TV contracts are a large source of revenue for the schools. As part of that, the conference did a lot of things differently. We pooled all of the TV rights that were previously fragmented and managed by schools individually. We agreed to share revenue equally. We agreed to invest in more aggressive marketing. We considered expansion as part of that because we thought it would be accretive as part of the value.

Michael Young: The TV contracts were all coming up for renewal, and I knew that there was going to be a real reshuffling [in the conferences] if that was the case. At that point, I had my people do some work on the academic side. I knew we were good enough athletically. We were the first non-BCS conference to go to a BCS bowl. We were the first non BCS-conference school to go to two BCS bowls. We beat Alabama going away.

But I knew the presidents in different contexts and I knew the other concern was the academics matter. So, I started a campaign. I was on a board with a couple of them. I knew others from different contexts, so I started calling them all and gently lobbying. As Boise State made clear when the rest of us were in the Mountain West, nobody likes a school lobbying, so I did gentle lobbying. I just said, “Look, it’s pretty clear that there’s going to be realignment. You guys are probably going to be looking to expand. You know the athletic prowess of the University of Utah. You know the footprint it has and what it would bring in that regard. Let me tell you why I think we fit in academically as well.

The stats were really interesting. Utah was smack in the middle in almost every stat. There were five schools that were better and five schools that weren’t as good. So, I one by one spent time with every one of the presidents in one context or another laying out the case for why the University of Utah was a fit. And they were to varying degrees receptive.

Chris Hill: The process from our end was different than the process from the Pac-10 and then Pac-12. In the 90’s we always thought that that’s where we needed to be and where our university was. So I would invite some of their AD’s to come see what we had in the league and every once in a while let them know and just prepare ourselves that if someday they made a move, we would be easy to go.

SETTING THE STAGE

Before expansion was even a consideration, a few things needed to happen. First, Larry Scott needed to sell the presidents of the sitting Pac-10 universities on the need to make the move and the logistics it would entail. Second, Utah would need a partner to come with them.

Scott: It was really about laying out a vision for how expansion would fit into an overall strategic vision for where the conference was going. So, I had to put it in the context of how expansion would help us achieve our broader objectives – staying competitive, closing some of the gaps that existed financially and otherwise between us and other conferences, and would help us with important strategic initiatives like creating our own TV network.

People in our conference started with the perspective of being very, very happy with ten schools. There was a lot of tradition in the conference and a lot of natural architecture around the ten schools. So, there were reasons not to expand such as having to change from a round robin in football where every team would play each other every year. If we were going to expand, you were going to lose some of that and make some compromises, so there had to be some compelling reasons to expand because it would come with tradeoffs.

Once we started to consider expanding, then we did a lot of work around defining how we would go about it and the criteria that we would consider. First and foremost, it would be the schools that would be a good fit and secondly add value. Adding value had a lot to do with the markets that the schools would come from and their positioning in the marketplace and their history in terms of athletic achievement and the fan base. There were other things we looked at in terms of their geography and in terms of their academic profile and other aspects of fit.

Hill: When Larry Scott got the job, he made the statement that they’re looking [to expand]. Years ago, Colorado and Texas were considered, then Texas said no. Then in November [2009], I called the AD from Colorado. They seemed interested, but at the same time, they were in a league where you don’t want to be out fishing. We were in the Mountain West, and if I got caught fishing, so be it. So we talked to their president, Mike Young, myself and [Colorado AD] Mike Bohn on the Saturday morning of a home football game. At the meeting we decided, “Hey Chris, why don’t you be the one to figure out a way to meet with Larry, talk to him about our school, and the potential that Colorado would be interested.”

NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN

After reaching an agreement with Colorado to approach the Pac-10 about their expansion aspirations, Chris Hill explained that serious discussions with Scott began in February of 2010.

Hill: I first told [Larry Scott] that I would be out in California fundraising and said, “Let’s go to lunch.” And then he contacted me back and said, “Why don’t we go to an office complex.” I thought that was interesting. If he didn’t want to be seen with me, that’s a good thing. So, I went there and spent two or three hours. It was nerve wracking going in. I felt like I was going in the dark of night to go visit with this guy. I was pretty nervous. I was thinking how should I dress? I told my wife that this was a really interesting meeting I’m going to.

He had a list of teams there, and we were on a good list. Of course, they all had to be research institutions. It was the culture of the conference.

Scott: The focus was very much on academic profile and trajectory and Utah at the time was ascendant academically. Their rankings were improving, the growth areas of the university seemed to be increasing the amount of research dollars they were attracting every year. They were really considered a preeminent research institution in the West. So we spent a lot of time trying to understand that as well as focusing on the athletic heritage, pedigree, which was obvious.

We were looking at facilities, talking about future plans and objectives and philosophy, and we came to the determination that [Utah] would be a really good fit culturally. They were a school that had a history of being very successful despite having less resources than traditional big conference schools. And we became excited about the possibility of being a good fit early on, but also becoming a strong member of the conference with the additional resources, exposure and prestige that would come being a part of the Pac-12.

Former Utah president (and current Texas A&M president) Michael Young

THE TEXAS FACTOR

While Utah presented its case for inclusion with any future plans for the Pac-10, one scenario loomed large in Utah’s fate: the potential addition of Texas and other schools from the Big-12 to form a 16-team super conference. As Texas weighed its options, Utah’s fate lied indirectly with decision makers in Austin. For a time, it looked like if Texas turned its loyalty westward, Utah would be out.

Scott: We looked at a few different scenarios. We were considering a 16-team conference at one stage as well as 12 teams. And ultimately under the 12-team scenario, Utah and Colorado were the logical ones because of geographic proximity, fit, the academic profile of the schools as well as the athletic heritage and pedigree.

Hill: We knew that we were on the “good guy” list, but we also knew that if Texas wanted to go, they ruled the day in my mind. Then it would be the Texas schools to go, Colorado, and in my mind it came down to us and Kansas if it went to 16.

Young: The call I remember most clearly was I had a call with Larry Scott in which he said, “Gee Mike, I’m sorry to tell you but we’re going to go in a different direction.” I said, “Well, I’ve heard that geographic description before. What’s that mean?” And he said, “We’re going to go with Colorado, Oklahoma, the University of Texas, and Texas A&M.” And I said, “Larry, let me give you my cell number. That’s not going to work out.”

I surmised the following: Oklahoma probably would be tough to go because it would be hard for them to leave Oklahoma State for political reasons. The legislature may not even let them do it. [Oklahoma president David] Boren wants to do something spectacular, but I don’t know if they can go without Oklahoma State and the Pac-10 won’t take Oklahoma State. That’s my strong suspicion.

Two, you are articulating this vision of equality in the conference in terms of distribution. You want to set up a network like the Big Ten network, things like that. UT won’t give up its television network. It’s a huge cash cow for UT. They cannot do it. They won’t do it. Which is why some schools have left the Big-12 already because they’re so fed up with that. I said it just isn’t going to happen. And unless you’re willing to swallow really hard and allow that to continue, and my guess is that USC and UCLA won’t do that.

Then if that’s the case, it doesn’t make any sense to take Texas A&M. With the geography, you have one real outlier school. So, the thing that makes sense is you take Colorado and you take us. I realize you’re going to try to negotiate something else, but just call me when you’re ready for me to come to California.

THE WAITING GAME

After initial discussions began with Utah and other schools in February, the Pac-10 turned its attention to doing due diligence throughout the remainder of the spring. In the meantime, Utah would have to wait to hear about its ultimate fate.

Hill: We just stayed optimistic and we stayed in contact. My wife and I had a trip with a non-stop flight to Paris. We had stayed in contact all that time and then everything started happening. So, I’m on the phone at midnight in Paris talking to Michael Young, trying to talk to some of the people in the Pac-12. I also was on the phone talking to some of the other ADs like Iowa State and Kansas State and those people that may be left out if all of the Texas schools go, about maybe we should form a league there.

So, we get on the plane to come home, and I say [to my wife], “We could land and there could be TV trucks there and I have no idea what the hell’s going on.” Because we thought we were in good shape. And then as it happened, Texas decided not to go. I don’t know how serious that was. So, it was Colorado and Utah. They called us on Monday and said, “We’d like to invite you, but we need to get some things settled first.” So we took a plane. Mr. [Spence] Eccles took Mike Young and I out to their conference offices. We went out there and talked about a lot of things.

We worked everything out but the money and they said, “When can you start?” Colorado was going to have to wait a year but we said, “We’ll start now.” They said, “You won’t get any money.” And we said, “We don’t care.” We wanted to get it done before any kind of political pressure hit us – anybody in the state trying to say we couldn’t do it.

Young: I was fortunate in having other things to do. It was only a two-day period between that conversation with Larry and his phone call back to me. I had a lot of conversations with the other presidents. Interestingly, I had a lot more confidence than Larry did that this 16-team thing wouldn’t work out. Part of that was from my some of my conversations with the presidents, who were more careful about expansion and the direction that it would take.

Two days later he called, and Chris Hill and I under cover of darkness – [Utah booster] Spence Eccles let us borrow his plane – and we flew down and negotiated. Chris Hill had also been working behind the scenes with the AD’s. He was really instrumental and important in this thing. He deserves a lot of credit and I want to make sure that everybody’s clear about that.

ABSOLUTE SECRECY

As negotiations intensified, speculation also grew rapidly. For a two-week period at the beginning of June, the entire college football world was in a frenzy about conference expansion, and most specifically about the fate of the Big-12 and Pac-10. Understandably, with negotiations that impact the layout of the entire college football landscape, there was increased media scrutiny – and the need for the players involved to maintain secrecy.

Scott: We were very much trying to stay below the radar as much as possible. I think there was a common understanding amongst our presidents and athletic directors that the best outcomes for the Pac-10 at the time were going to be to go about evaluating our options and have negotiations quietly and privately, not through the media.

Hill: We kept our traps shut.

It was so important [to stay quiet] because we didn’t know what was going to happen. We were getting dressed up, getting ready, asked to dance, but we didn’t know what they were going to do. You don’t want to go out and say “Oh, we have this” when you don’t and then embarrass yourself. You don’t want to make stuff up. So really all we did was keep our head down, keep them informed, answer questions and tell them how good we were and all of that stuff. Give them information – academic information, athletic, our budgets, all of that stuff. It was more just waiting for them to pull the trigger.

Scott: Because they had their own stakeholders to deal with: boards of trustees, regents, politicians, donors, that a lot of public speculation would not be helpful and could derail things. So the more quiet, the better from the university side. Utah and Colorado managed that process extremely well from their standpoint, which wasn’t easy, especially when you’re dealing with public institutions.

Hill: I can’t emphasize enough how exciting it was, how cool it was to be doing stuff that people didn’t know about, traveling places and working with Colorado and trying to figure things out. I essentially delivered the message to Larry that Colorado was interested, but I didn’t want to get them in trouble. But you know where you are in the food chain. We knew who we were in the pecking order. We were the lower market school. We knew that Colorado, even though we feel we could beat them a lot, they have a bigger TV market. So as long as they got Colorado in their mind, then they’ve got to get another one and we were that school because they didn’t go to 16. If they went to 16, I still to this day don’t know if we’re in or out. I thought it would be us and Kansas, but who knows.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott

THE BUY IN

Before things could become official, there were a few details for Utah to iron out. The largest of these would be how to manage the financials of Utah buying in to a conference that a significantly higher profile than that of the Mountain West Conference.

Young: The Pac-12 was very cooperative. I basically took the position that I understand that you have a lot of equity built into this brand and we shouldn’t immediately benefit from that brand because we haven’t contributed to it, but we’d contribute to it over time. At that point it’s fair for us to get full share. My problem is that I don’t think I can use state money to do a big buy-in as is the case for some conference moves, where you give multiple tens and twentys millions of dollars to buy into a conference.

So, I said is there a way that we can think through this that is respectful of the equity that you’ve built in the brand but doesn’t put me in the position of using limited state, tuition or donor resources to pay what is perceived to be rich schools like USC and UCLA? So, we worked out this deal very quickly, where we would get a half share, then a three quarter share, then a full share, which really was respectful of the equity they’d built in the brand but also our limitation of not wanting either politically or financially to make a buy in to a big conference. And the truth is that that payout was already appreciably more than we were getting in the Mountain West anyway, so it’s not like it was a sacrifice.

Hill: It was not a requirement to upgrade our facilities. There was our commitment to say we are going to get things good where you’ll be proud of us, but they didn’t say, “You have to have X seat stadium. You have to have this kind of training facility.” None of that. Everybody thinks there was that, but no. The Pac-12 wanted us to do it. We used it, but we didn’t say they made us do it. We were very careful with our donors and with the media. We’d say, “We want to be Pac-12 caliber. That’s what we want to do. How can we compete with them unless we’re Pacc-12 caliber in our facilities?” It was not required Nothing was required except playing on Sunday and the money we gave up.

THE AFTERMATH

On June 17, 2010, Utah was officially welcomed to the Pac-12 conference in a ceremony at Rice-Eccles Stadium. At the time, the revelry was the culmination of years of academic success and months of hard work by Young, Hill and their respective staffs. Although all in attendance knew that the change would be monumental for athletics, few truly appreciated how much of an impact the new conference affiliation would have on the university community as a whole.

Young: I think it has changed the ambition level. It’s one thing to say I’m going to compete every year in virtually every sport for a conference title and I’m going to try to be in the mix for a national title with some of my teams some of the time. And I’m going to do it with integrity and honesty. When you say you’re competing for a Pac-12 title, you’re really competing at a pretty rarefied level. I think it really does create a goal and standard that’s very high. When you have Berkeley and UCLA regularly coming to your campus, you’re also in a position when you’re recruiting faculty to say, “This is the crowd we run with.” The amount of funding, the kind of research, the kind of students you’re attracting, and I think it’s helped a lot. It gives you a national visibility. And that’s a good thing.

Hill: What people don’t get is that the company you keep athletically in your league does make people think of your university like that. And the example I would use is that the Ivy League is not an academic league. It’s an athletic league with schools that are similarly associated. When you say Ivy League, people know what that is. Now we’re in the Pac-12, people say, yeah that’s Cal, UCLA, Stanford. It creates an image of your school academically because of who you’re with. It’s a phenomenon, but it’s real.

Scott: I think it’s been an outstanding success having Utah and Colorado as part of the Pac-12. It helped us achieve key strategic imperatives like adding a football championship, which has been very successful; helping us build value in the conference, we were able to do a blockbuster TV deal with ESPN and FOX in 2011; and it helped us create the excitement in the expanded market and fan bases that allowed us to launch a TV network. We’re the only conference in the country that has an independently owned conference television network, which most people thought was impossible to achieve. No one thought we’d be able to get a TV network launched, let alone without a major media partner. It shows the strength of the markets and fan base in Colorado and Utah. They’ve been a great fit in our conference at every level.

Every time I spend time with faculty or university leadership on these campuses, I hear great stories about the lift in prestige that’s come and the benefit to the schools of being part of the Pac-12 as an academic club, which has some of the leading universities in the country and the world. We’ve got three universities amongst the top 15 in the world according to the latest rankings. And I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of the academic prestige and the connection and the collaboration that has been facilitated on the academic side. Most people overlook it. Conference affiliation is about athletics and direct benefits there, but that’s been a significant benefit that I probably didn’t appreciate at the time.

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