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Utah athletic director Chris Hill opened his front door and was greeted by his wife, Kathy, bubbling over with excitement.

“Red alert,” she screamed. “Urban’s coming! Urban’s coming!”

Hill was only mildly surprised by the news, having interview Urban Meyer for the Utes’ coaching vacancy earlier in the day at the Denver Airport.

The meeting went well, so well that Hill hoped Meyer would fly to Salt Lake City to meet the board of trustees and finalize the deal.

Meyer pushed back. He wanted to attend an event in New York City, delaying his campus visit by several days and lending uncertainty to the process.

Hill flew home and was mulling options for Saturday night with his family when he opened the front door and Kathy broke the news that Meyer had changed his plans and would be in Salt Lake City the next day.

Recalling the events Monday afternoon, Hill laughed.

“My wife said, ‘I told him that he was your No. 1 choice.’ I was like, you’re not helping my negotiating power.'”

It worked out just fine: 15 years ago today, Meyer took charge of the Utes, and everything changed.

It changed for Utah football, for the Utah campus, for Mountain West and, eventually, for the Pac-10 conference.

Meyer and Utah proved a match made in a bottle of lightning. In two years, Meyer won 22 games and led the Utes to the Fiesta Bowl, forever altering the perception and trajectory of the program.

“When he came out,’’ Hill recalled, “I made it clear that I expected him to do well and, if that happened, he would have other opportunities. I said, ‘We want to keep you long-term, but if you hit the biggest of bigs, I’ll give you a hug and wish you luck.’

“And he hit the biggest of bigs.”

Utah was a different program, a different place, when Meyer bolted for Florida two years later. The culture he created and the recruits Utah signed — both under Meyer and immediately following his departure — became the foundation of teams that would go 33-6 over a three-year period under Meyers’ successor, Kyle Whittingham.

One of the those 33 wins was in the Sugar Bowl, over Alabama.

All 33 caught the eye of a certain conference west of Salt Lake City that was in the expansion market.

“We wanted to put ourselves in position to be attractive to people, and football was a big part of it,” Hill said. “The whole goal was to make it easy, to help make it an easy decision for (the Pac-10).

“Once they had interest in Colorado, we were the obvious win for them to be the second choice.’’

The Pac-10 first attempted to raid the Big 12 and form a 16-team super-conference. Once that fizzled, it focused on the 12-school structure.

Colorado was central to either plan. Without the Texas and Oklahoma schools, Utah filled in nicely as No. 12.

“Everything we did was designed to help get us into that league,” said Hill, who included Rice-Eccles Stadium (opened: 1998) in that formula. “We wanted to be dressed and ready.’’

Which begs the question: What if Utah hadn’t hired Meyer 15 years ago?

Hill declined to reveal the identities of the three other finalists, but it’s doubtful any would have produced the sizzling results or signed the personnel that fueled the wondrous three-year stretch — the stretch that unfolded just when the Pac-10 was casting its expansionist eye to the east.

Maybe the conference would have grabbed Utah anyhow. It fit the model as a large, secular research institution in a new TV market.

But of this there is no doubt:

Meyer’s tenure in Salt Lake City was the foundation that would make the Pac-10’s decision easy, that would eliminate any doubt.

In two seasons, he changed a program in a way that would ultimately reshape a conference.

“It allowed us think big,’’ Hill said, adding that had Meyer not been hired: “It would have taken us longer.”

For that, Hill’s decision to hire Meyer stands as one of the shrewdest coaching hires of the century in the western third of the country.

And it got the Hotline thinking: What are the others?

Here’s my list (head coaches and coordinators only) of the top hiring decisions of the past 17 years.

10. San Jose State hires Mike MacIntyre. A little-known (in the west) defensive coordinator at Duke, MacIntyre would orchestrate not one but two remarkable turnarounds: He won 10 games at SJSU and a division title at Colorado. The opportunity for the latter doesn’t happen unless he’s given a chance by the Spartans prior to the 2010 season.

9. Washington State hires Mike Leach. The boldest of strikes by the Cougars in Nov. ‘11, hiring the out-of-work, controversial Leach to rebuild the floundering program. And rebuild he has: Three consecutive seasons of eight or more wins, position of relevance in the North, unprecedented exposure for a school located in one of the nation’s most remote locales. Tough to slot him higher, however, because of the lack of a division title.

8. Oregon State re-hires Mike Riley. It was Feb. 2003, Dennis Erickson had just bolted Corvallis for the 49ers, and OSU turned to a familiar face: Riley, who had elevated the program in the late 1990s, was an assistant in the NFL. Over the next 12 years, he would lead the Beavers to eight winning seasons. That sustained success with limited resources in Corvallis would be cause for a loftier ranking except that Riley was a known commodity to the Beavers from his first tenure.

7. Cal hires Jeff Tedford. The Bears were coming off a 1-10 season when, in Dec. ’01, they tapped the Oregon offensive coordinator to haul them out of the conference gutter. A year later, they won seven games. Three years later, they were dueling with USC for supremacy of the west. Tedford’s tenure ended poorly, but only after an incredible turnaround and 11 seasons that produced far more good than bad.

6. Stanford promotes David Shaw. Judged by coaching success, Shaw would, of course, be higher on this list. But as a hiring decision, his promotion warrants a middle-tier placement: He had been on the Cardinal staff for four years and was on the very short list of in-house-only candidates to replace Jim Harbaugh in the winter of 2011, having displayed a keen understanding of what was required for sustained success at his alma mater.

5. Utah hires Urban Meyer. Had gone 17-6 in two years at Bowling Green when he landed in Salt Lake City. “We wanted to hire somebody who was ready to slam it, to make his shot in life,’’ Hill explained. “He had been at Colorado State, so I knew he wasn’t afraid to live in the west.”

4. Stanford hires Jim Harbaugh. Why wouldn’t the head coach of a non-scholarship school in San Diego produce an upset for the ages and turn a 1-11 team into a 12-1 powerhouse in four years. How could anyone have possibly been skeptical? (Guilty!) That Harbaugh brought Shaw with him from USD only adds to the brilliance of it all, with former athletic director Bob Bowlsby as the maestro. (Bowlsby, by the way, doesn’t get enough credit for his behind-the-scenes work building the football infrastructure.)

3. Boise State hires Chris Petersen as offensive coordinator. Given the years gone by and the innocuous nature of the hire, it’s easy to overlook. But who could have guessed that Dan Hawkins’ decision to grab a young assistant from Oregon in the winter of 2001 would set in motion one of the greatest coaching careers college football in the west has ever known. In 11 seasons in charge of Boise State and Washington, Petersen has won 10+ games nine times. Related Articles Heisman Trophy: The Pac-12 favorite for 2018 isn’t who you think (wink, wink … err, quack, quack)

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2. Oregon hires Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator. The story is well-documented, but the impact of Kelly’s arrival in Eugene will be felt forever — not only because of the success he experienced as a coordinator and head coach (46-7 in four years) but because he revolutionized the game. Kelly, as many surely know, was the offensive coordinator at New Hampshire at the time. A move of sheer genius by then-coach Mike Bellotti.

1. USC hires Pete Carroll: The greatest bungled hiring process of all time, anywhere, delivered a dynasty. The Trojans whiffed on Bellotti, Erickson and Riley before picking Carroll, who had been out of coaching for a year after his second NFL dismissal. But consider this: Those are only the three coaches we know former USC athletic director Mike Garrett tried to hire before landing Carroll. It’s entirely possible he swung and missed on others that never went public.

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