Utah athletic director Chris Hill sat down for an hour-long round-table meeting with the local media on Wednesday to discuss the state of Utah athletics. Here are some of the highlights.
On Rice-Eccles Stadium expansion:
“You know my joke about expanding the stadium? It’s very popular: we are adding restrooms, that’s our expansion. The crowds have been good, the problem is as I look around the country and I talk to other ADs and we look at the attendance even of the Alabama’s of the worlds haven’t grown. I am swimming up stream with everybody going, ‘expand, expand, expand, expand,” and I’m looking at Arizona State go from 75,000 to 58,000 and they are giddy about that.
“I said I’d took a look at it, and now as I look years later, I’m saying our atmosphere and Oregon’s are the only ones that feel great when you come into them. Expanding would be the cheap seats and it would cost $50 million. There isn’t a person in our league that would tell us to expand.
“The funny thing is everybody says that the size of your stadium is related to who would come to your house… It doesn’t matter how big your house is, in fact if your house is full it looks better and the TV likes it more. You don’t want to turn on again with the University of Utah with a 75,000 seat stadium with 50,000 people there.”
On RES south end zone project/ new scoreboard:
“The reality of the stadium is that the south end zone is not structurally sound, it’s ok and we can manage, but we all know that’s going to have to go. The locker rooms are awful, the press area is awful.”
Hill said that Utah will install a new 120-foot scoreboard behind the south end zone following the 2015 season, and will install it in a way that when the time comes to rebuild the south end zone, it won’t affect the scoreboard.
“So we just want to find when three, four, five, six years from now that they decide to tear that down, that we have our scoreboard in the right place,” Hill said.
On the Pac-12 Network:
“If you look at what the Big 10 is going to be getting from their network, $10 million, and we are going to be getting $1 million, it’s a little bit tough. I know it’s going to be reevaluated and the models are going to be looked at. … They are going to take a look at the landscape and determine if they should be sticking with the model … or move in another direction.
“We are getting a million dollars from the Pac-12 network and about 17 million from ESPN and Fox, and then there is some deductions from some stuff too.”
In a related note, Hill mentioned that Utah may not be as well off in the money department as the public thinks.
“We are not loaded,” he said. “Everyone thinks we’re loaded and I don’t know what to do about it, that’s a real challenge. … I’m not whining, forget that, I’m just saying that we’re not loaded.”
On scheduling BYU:
“We are going to schedule them at the beginning of the year as much as we can. For what reasons does the AD at the University of Utah schedule that game at the end of the year? Why would that help the University of Utah? I get that we should play it every year, unless if Urban calls up and wants to play. … I feel like we are an important game to BYU and that’s when we need to play the game.
“Michigan at our house is important for a lot of reasons. You’re playing Michigan, that’s not a regional intermountain game, that’s a national game. You are sitting there as a recruit in Texas and say ‘Oh, Michigan is playing at Utah’ … it’s a big deal to play them, that’s a huge deal for our mission and what we want to accomplish as a national university… Everyone saw [not scheduling BYU] as being high and mighty, but no, that wasn’t the issue at all.
“Now I know this is not the case now but wouldn’t it be wonderful in 20 years to have great rivalry with BYU and then at the end of the season Colorado meant something a little more than it does now. You never get there if you don’t play it.”
On a potential local basketball tournament:
“We’ve talked about it, but I want to play it [in the Huntsman Center]. I have talked with Jimmy Olsen over at [EnergySolutions Arena], to have four schools, even if it’s a one night affair to play there, and that would take care of the rivalry games. But I talked to Tom Holmoe [BYU’s athletic director], and he says, ‘I need that game at home.’ And I understand that.
“I think the BYU-Utah thing in basketball is working well. That’s a good RPI game for us, that’s a good team, and it’s a good RPI game for them too.”
As for the Utah State rivalry on the hardwood, Hill expressed frustration that Utah State gave Wake Forest a 2-for-1 series, but wants Utah to agree to a home-and-home with Utah State.
Huntsman renovation dreams:
“Is this just me dreaming? To make this Huntsman Center right, we need bigger concourses and the only way to do that is to blow out all of our offices and then maybe we would build an office complex on the other side by academics and strength and conditioning, but that’s the only way for [the Huntsman] to get better. Sometimes my dreams are cloudy. It may not happen for 15 years, it may never happen.”
On the move to the Pac-12:
“It has been a very, very interesting four years. Everybody says you are, who you are — we are not who we were. The whole jump that we made is like jumping the Grand Canyon, everything is different.
“I think we are getting our sea legs. Its like we have been through four years of a generation with recruiting and everything. We set some goals in some sports to fund those right and make sure we compensate those people right, and there are some people whose ship hasn’t come in yet.”
On remaining competitive in the conference:
“As you look at our program, you know football, basketball, volleyball and now softball, gymnastics and swimming, they have all been nationally ranked. Our goal is to get in the mix in the Pac-12, be in the upper echelon and make a name for ourself in a national way. I feel like we now have our sea legs and the next step is to nail it, when you think of the Pac-12 and rattle off four or five names, that Utah is one of them.
“There are other sports that we kind of targeted to kind of change a little bit of the philosophy. For example, like skiing, instead of having more athletes, maybe reduce it down so you can have a larger scholarship for one. Track, we have this beautiful track, maybe it’s time to focus in, like Colorado does, in a high elevation sport. So focus in on distant runners … and make a mark in cross country. Strategically that could be a sport we put more energy into, more scholarships for distance and middle-distance people, and swimming maybe the same thing.”
On importance of coaches:
“Coaches make the biggest difference in the success of our program. The facilities are important, this is important, that’s important, but nine times out of 10 on signing day the players are going to talk about the coach and the relationship with the player. They’re not going to say we had gold handles on out toilets, they’re just not going to do that.”
On increased athlete stipends:
“What we are prepared for now is the cost of living, so that means students will be getting $3,500 a year in addition to what they have been getting, and that costs us about a $1 million. It’s in our budget for next year.”
@millerjryan