They'd already been left holding the bag by Texas, Oklahoma, and the others from the Big 12, Notre Dame had made it clear in prior conversations that they weren't interested either. AFter that there isn't a lot of options out west to look at. They already were stuck with Colorado and now had to find someone to even things out and let them salvage something from their failed expansion attempt (12 teams and a conference championship game).

Utah was the easy choice for them and I get that. As a football program they looked great the past 10 yrs, that wasn't hard to sell. But the reasons put forth by gloating Yewt fans as to why they didn't want to offer BYU don't hold water. The Pac 12 has been completely quiet on why so all we can do is read the tea leaves in the bottom of the cup but if you look for contradictions you can shoot holes in every reason.

BYU doesn't have a focus on research like Utah or Colorado but then neither does the University of Oregon and a few other Pac 12 schools (Oregon is comparatively close in the amount of federal research dollars to BYU). BYU and Utah aren't members of the American Association of Universities (Colorado is) but neither are several members of the Pac 12 and specifically neither were the most recent expansion schools the last time the Pac 12 took in teams (neither AZ nor ASU were although AZ joined 10 yrs later.) Many of the long time members of the conference weren't members of the AAU when they joined the Pac 12 and became members years or decades later. Based on their own history its not academics.

It's not financial (which ironically is usually the bottom line for these types of decisions). Even just a comparison of BYU and UTah's athletic budgets tells you that. I haven't seen numbers for the 2010 season (since it's still in progress) but the 2009 athletic season Utah had an athletic budget of $26 million and lost close to $1million. BYU, fielding more sports teams and paying their coaching staff considerably less, had an athletic budget of over $31 million and finished with a very healthy surplus. They both labored under the same weary TV contract, they shared Bowl game revenues equally, so the difference comes from other reasons, one being attendance both home and away. Your comment about BYU's fanbase that alluded to them being fairweather fans isn't accurate. Because they're the representative school of the LDS church is why their fans stay fans through thick and thin. To prove the point look at attendance figures during the bleak years of the Crowton era and then compare it with the lean years of Utah football before Urban took over. BYU attendance stayed in the 60K+ range on average while at the end of the McBride era alot of Utah home games saw crowds in the 25K+ range.

I worked in advertising for 10+ yrs and before that ran a chain of restaurants for 10 yrs and handled advertising on a broad scale over several states so I understand buying markets and targeting audiences. Even though BYU doesn't have a fanbase the size of Texas, Alabama, Florida, Ohio St, USC etc (teams with broad appeal) it's fanbase is nationwide and presents a very robust audience to target for advertising that the others don't because of the fact that the overwhelming majority of BYU's fanbase is LDS. When you analyze the demographics of a member of the church you see a consumer that is more highly educated than the average consumer (compares even more favorably with the average SEC fan in the deep south) which translates into a higher income level on average. Also, the average BYU fan is going to have a larger family than the typical fan from another school which makes them bigger consumers on average of basic goods as well as bigger ticket items like cars. One negative area I'll give you is they won't be a good audience for Beer company advertising dollars Basically they make up an easily defined, easy to target and robust slice of upper middle america. For advertising it's the fishing equivalent of hooking two fish with every cast.

Executives of major US companies that buy the advertising space don't make broad assumptions and instead are fanatical about scrutinizing how effective their advertising is. I sat in a conference just recently in Washington DC and listened to the CEO of the Purina Company go into amazing detail of how deeply they drill down to learn how effectively they are connecting to their target market. I was astonished at the level of attention to detail and the committment to finding out how to make their efforts even better.

Because the Pac 12 has been so silent on this leads you to question why are they so careful not to say anything? It's safer for them to not say anything at all rather than try and promulgate a flimsy, transparent excuse that everyone sees through and ends up reflecting negatively on them or even more safe to not say the real reason which is the biggest difference between Utah and BYU.

With the LDS Church's recent history in California and the heat they took over the Prop 8 debate and negative efforts of Hollywood to cast the LDS Church in the worst light possible with recent cable series, etc, it's easy to see that there are certain things on this earth big enough to cause an individual or group to ignore the bigger picture (another example is Gov Huckabee's stubborn determination to underhandedly torpedo a fellow party member like Mitt Romney because of his faith even when it had the risk of hurting the party's effort to win the Oval Office) for their own myopic opinion or view point.

We don't have to keep beating a dead horse (neiggghhhhh) over this because I understand we'll see things a little differently. It's easy to see why the Pac 10 chose Utah after the Big 12 debacle. They were in the right place at the right time dressed in the right attire. But to me, it's just as easy to see why they didn't choose BYU, that's all.