Colorado was already in at that point. Your explanation is beyond absurd. Do you remember what happened when Utah just cancelled a basketball game with BYU? Certain legislators went ballistic. They ordered an audit against the U and threatened to pull funds from the U hospital; that's right, they were willing to risk the health of Utahans over a basketball game.

Additionally, a follow-up article to the article you're discussing shows that this is exactly what Hill was talking about. Here's what he said:

"At that time, I was a little [concerned], but I thought reasonable people would step in and say, “Hey, how do you turn this down?” Maybe as time goes on, it may have been more political. Mike Young handled that part of it. As an AD, I couldn’t handle any of that. But I told Mike, in my opinion, we just go right away. The longer you’re in a league as a lame duck, the worse it gets, so let’s just go as soon as we can even if we get no money. It did turn out that Colorado got out of their thing, which we also thought would happen. So now we were able to start as soon as possible."