SALT LAKE CITY — Utah athletics director Chris Hill’s State of the Utes roundtable convened on Wednesday with an introductory statement that said it all.
“It’s been a very, very interesting four years,” he began.
It has been five years since the Pac-12 rumors got serious, four since they went into writing. Which led Hill to gather about a dozen local media members to discuss the direction of athletics.
“You know, a guy says you are who you are, but we’re not who we were — that’s for sure,” he said. “The whole jump we made is like jumping the Grand Canyon.”
Evel Knievel should be so daring. Hill spent considerable time discussing how athletics shape the national and global image of a university. It may not be the ivory tower approach, he admitted, but it’s a fact.
Much as faculty snobs may complain, athletics get your name out, but academics give it wings. Hill noted the term “Ivy League school” is referencing an athletic conference, not academic.
“Tufts University in Boston is every bit as good as Princeton,” he said. “But you don’t think of that.”
Athletics aren’t the main reason for universities, just the most visible.
“An athletic program — if done correctly — can move your (university’s) image forward,” he said.
Utah isn’t the only school that thinks this way. BYU has long used athletics to further both academic and religious pursuits, which is one reason it didn’t just take the off-ramp when the conference revolution occurred. The Cougars are determined to be in this for the long haul, evidenced by the upcoming enhancements and additions to the Marriott Center. BYU’s overall athletic facilities are fully comparable to power conference schools.
So with Utah and BYU sharing similar goals, and just 50 miles apart, playing annually should be a no-brainer, right?
“I get that we should play BYU every year. I get that,” Hill said.
On one condition …
Hill spent five minutes of an hour with the media talking about the series with the Cougars. Last fall marked the first interruption in the series since 1945. The teams won’t play this fall, either. Hill noted that when Michigan entertained a home-and-home proposal, the Utes jumped.
“I think Michigan at our house is important for a lot of reasons,” Hill said. “That’s not a regional, intermountain game. That’s a national game. You’re sitting there as a recruit from Texas and saying, ‘Hmmm, Michigan is playing at Utah. Wisconsin’s playing at Illinois and you switch back and forth. It’s a big deal to play them. It’s a huge deal for our mission and what we want to accomplish as a national university. So that’s a good thing.”
BYU and Utah are set to play in 2016-2018 and there are discussions about 2019 and 2020. The problem is that BYU continues to need games late in the calendar, while the Pac-12 prefers its schools not to schedule out-of-conference games past mid-October, excepting Notre Dame-USC.
“Notre Dame is the exception because it’s a national-international game,” Hill said.
Even without those stipulations, Hill said it would be hard to interrupt a conference race with a non-conference game so late in the season. He did agree to do so on Nov. 24, 2018, because BYU needed the game and Utah could help Colorado avoid playing 11 consecutive weeks.
Otherwise, as the song goes, see you in September.
This isn’t what local fans would prefer.
“There’s an understanding intellectually; there’s not an understanding emotionally,” Hill said.
But couldn’t another Michigan situation arise and hijack the rivalry game early in the year, too?
“I’m not going to talk like that coming out of here today,” Hill said. “That’s nuts. But if Urban (Meyer) wants to play in ’21-22, I might think about switching the schedule around.”
For now the rivalry will be back on schedule, starting in 2016. But clearly the cards all belong to Hill. He’s right about one thing: Four years later, he’s in a different place.
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