Has this article been brought up before? Dug this out of the archives tonight....interesting read. I firmly believe if BYU had Rondo Fehlberg and Glen Tuckett in the administration with a Jeffrey R. Holland as President, BYU would be in a P5 years ago.

Here is the link and I've included some interesting quotes from the article.


1998 DNews Article: Which Would Pac-10 Prefer, BYU or Utah?

"Former Cougar athletic director Glen Tuckett says if Pac-10 athletic directors would have had their way, BYU would have been invited a long time ago. But it's the presidents who call the shots and they've been resistant to the idea of BYU being in the Pac-10.

"On the AD level, they told us they'd love to have us," Tuckett said. "On the presidential level, it was a different story.

But we were always an attractive entity. The Pac-10 would have traded Washington State, Oregon State and Oregon in for us at any time."

Apparently, Pac-10 ADs are still infatuated with BYU. Athletic director Rondo Fehlberg says almost every Pac-10 school is beating down the door to schedule the Cougars. During the upcoming football season, BYU continues home-and-home series with Washington and Arizona State while Cal and Stanford are listed as tentative opponents on future schedules.

Sources contend the presidents are blackballing BYU simply because of their biases against the school.

"It's religious prejudice masquerading as academic snobbery," said one source who did not want to be identified. "They're trying to find an excuse to avoid the real issue, that they don't want a school that is tied to the LDS Church."

BYU's position, meanwhile, is there are no guarantee that the school's hierarchy would approve a move to the Pac-10 anyway. "It's not a given that if an invitation came tomorrow, BYU would do it," Fehlberg said. "Some people at the school believe BYU is in a high profile enough position as it is. Discussions along those lines would have to be conducted in a thorough, thoughtful way."