1. I’m sure the Pac 10 had a policy about it and preferred Utah to play Colorado. Could USC ignore that policy? Sure. But Utah didn’t have the same clout as USC, if they did they wouldn’t have taken 50% rev share. Utah is not USC. And Utah didn’t want to waste their capital negotiating something that doesn’t help and arguable hurts them.
2. Even if Utah COULD play BYU in November, they shouldn’t. BYU’s independence and meaningful November games is 0% Utah’s problem. Utah was struggling in their new conference and didn’t have bandwidth to help BYU put butts in seats. They were struggling with bowl eligibility. And the game absolutely was a distraction, the first time Utah finally got into the championship game the next week they fell behind by 21 to BYU with a freshman QB at RES and required a miracle to come back.

The shoe is now on the other foot. Hopefully for BYU fans you’ll be playing Texas Tech or Houston or whomever in November with a chance at the champ game on the line, you don’t want to have to drop everything to play Utah out or conference and risk injury and loss.

Is this football and major college athletics or Girl Scouts?
Half of your arguments are “Utah should have been nicer to BYU” or “Utah showed no loyalty.” Honestly, if I were a BYU fan, and my school had a chance to leave for a bigger conference and refused that invite for a conference rival, I would be so angry I would have renounced my fandom and demanded that everyone in the athletic department be fired for negligence. I don’t know if this story is true, but if it is, it’s fiscal irresponsibility bordering on criminal. Your program was offered a chance to make tens of millions more per year, bring legit programs to LES and compete on a national stage and your AD said “sorry we can’t go without Utah.” If this is true, everyone on this board should go buy ice cream salt to salt the earth at Val Hale’s grave so no flowers ever grow there again. That is the college athletics equivalent of the Yankees saying “hey Boston, we’ve got too many good players, why don’t you take a few of ours.”