Interesting article. No mention that Texas Tech and Oklahoma State were offeredâŠin fact, itâs said that Oklahoma State wasnât offered due to academic fit which is why Oklahoma probably couldnât join. Says that they were looking at adding Colorado, A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma.
https://247sports.com/college/utah/Article/The-Right-Fit-An-Oral-History-of-How-Utah-Joined-the-Pac-12-119713965/
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.
https://247sports.com/college/utah/Article/The-missing-pieces-Additional-quotes-from-the-decision-makers-on-Pac-12-expansion-119725885/
"One of the wonderful things about Chris Hill and about so many of the great athletics supporters at the University of Utah is I think some of the things I was thinking about (from an academic standpoint) were on their mind as well. Let me elaborate what that is: I was interested in what effect this would have on the academic side or the perception of the academic side of the institution. The University of Utah was a very strong athletic program and a very strong academic program and really rising in both. I didnât want to put us in a position where we would be viewed as just an athletic school. Thatâs why my pitch to the Pac-12 presidents and my interest in the Pac-12 was that these were schools that we wanted to be identified with. We looked like these great research universities. We are one of these great research universities. We ought to be in the same room with them and creating the national perception that thatâs the case was important, but so was creating the internal perception. Our competition academically was the same as it should be athletically. Itâs UCLA and Washington and all of these other great schools.
So, I called friends at Arizona and Arizona State and asked about when they went into the Pac-8. They told me a couple of interesting things. Arizona hasnât won a football title since they went into the Pac-10. Itâs 40 years later, but the professors I talked to all had a perspective to them. They all said to a person that it was the best thing academically that ever happened to the university. Because they were now viewed with the University of Washington, which gets the second most amount of research money as any school in the nation; Berkeley, which by most accounts is the number one public university in the nation, UCLA, Stanford, USC⊠To be mentioned in the same breath of those universities upped everyoneâs perception both internally and externally. It gave them something to strive for, so when they thought of themselves, they thought, âWe work to be like Berkeley, not like a school with considerably less academic heft.â
From my perspective, that was pretty powerful and turned out to be pretty true. It raised everybodyâs academic sights. It raised externally everyoneâs perception of the university, but internally who we thought we were and what we thought of ourselves. So, for me that was very important."