“Try to say friggin’ and flippin’.’”
In 1989, when Chris Hill, the athletic director at the University of Utah, was in the process of hiring the best, and most ungovernable, basketball coach to ever anchor a bench in the state of Utah, he pulled out a yellow legal pad and in longhand sketched out a contract as he was flying to Seattle to finalize the deal.
Knowing Rick Majerus’s proclivity to use, shall we say, rather colorful language from time to time, Hill inserted the above-noted provision.
True story — and he still has that original yellow pad to prove it.
The Majerus contract is just one of three decades worth of stories the most accomplished AD in University of Utah history has captured in his memoir, “Thirty-one Years In The Front Row,” that was released this week, just in time for Father’s Day.
For the better part of the last two years, Hill has racked his memory, assembled his memorabilia and huddled with former Deseret News sports writer Brad Rock and his top aide at the U, Liz Abel, to capture, through story-telling, an era of University of Utah athletics that transformed what had been a middle-tier D-I school into one of the most admired athletic departments in the country.
From 1987 through 2018, Hill and the Utes embarked on a building phase unlike anything in the school’s history. One that saw tens of millions spent on new facilities, including a total makeover of Rice-Eccles Stadium, a trip to the NCAA basketball tournament championship game, two undefeated BCS-busting football teams and the Utes first admittance into a power conference when it joined the PAC-12.
And yet, when he was first hired as AD in October 1987, Chris Hill was the unlikeliest of candidates to steer the Ute ship.
His credentials amounted to directing a nonprofit and raising money for the Ute booster club. He’d had a grand total of eight jobs, one of them as a house painter, in 14 years since first coming to Utah in 1973 as a graduate assistant to head basketball coach Bill Foster, the coach he’d played for at Rutgers. “I was an Irish Catholic left-wing Democrat from New Jersey,” Hill recalls. “When I got here I’d never met a Mormon.”
Count him among the skeptics who doubted his chances.
From his memoir: “I knew that being 37 years old and having never been an AD before and not being from Utah or Latter-day Saint — might be a detriment to my application.”
But when Jim Copeland left Utah for the AD job at Virginia in 1987, somebody had to replace him.
Hill’s big break came in his interview with school president Chase Peterson. “Probably the only person who would have hired me,” he attests. “He saw something and took a chance on me. Because I had my Ph.D., he suggested I should go by Dr. Hill. He said “you’re 37, you look 27 and you’re supposed to be 47, so if I call you Dr. Hill the faculty will be more accepting.”
The new AD didn’t take long to make his mark. He was just two years into the job when he fired the very popular (but not wildly successful) basketball coach Lynn Archibald and replaced him with Rick Majerus, who perennially led the Utes to the NCAA tournament, including four Sweet 16 appearances, two Elite Eights and one Final Four. It was the foreshadowing of another bold and legendary hire in 2003, when he fired the very popular football coach Ron McBride and replaced him with Urban Meyer, who went 22-2 in his two years at Utah before moving on to win three national championships at Florida State and Ohio State.
Hill tells stories about these experiences and many, many more. About donors and fundraising — he recalls the day Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller came by his office to write out a check for $500,000 for the stadium project, then before he left wrote out another one for $500,000 when Hill assured him it would mean the pillars would be covered in red sandstone. About getting into the Pac-12 — it all began with a 2009 phone call Hill made to Colorado AD Mike Bohn. About the four job offers he turned down to stay at Utah — Miami (1993), Duke (1998), Washington (2004), Oregon (2008).
And through it all there’s the Majerus stories. Which never get old.
He tells about Majerus’ first speaking engagement on campus:
“I picked him up in my car and he was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, which immediately made me panic and wonder what I was doing. I introduced him to the gathering and he was wonderful. He had great knowledge of topics outside of basketball and made a lot of jokes about food. But all the while I was waiting for the next shoe to drop. When Rick opened it up for questions, someone asked, ‘What do you think about all these Mormons?’
“I then started realizing that I still had my teaching credential, my wife had a job, and we could get by if I got fired over what Rick might say. I don’t know if there was a time during his career when I was more petrified about a response from him, but he was great. He took a breath and said, ‘Anybody who keeps a year’s supply of food in their home is a friend of mine.’”
Hill kept his job. As did Majerus, who was never perfect. But he friggin’ tried.
“Thirty-one Years In The Front Row” is available at chrishillstories.com and on Amazon.