A Look into Utes' Future
If Ute A.D. Chris Hill is telling the truth, the Utes are getting treated fairly in the new Pac-12.
Hill met with other athletic directors from the conference, last week, and said the schools were “very good to us and it didn’t feel like big brother-little brother.”
Among the issues he mentioned on Tuesday were:
Stadium expansion — Hill pointed out that Utah’s stadium is the same size as Oregon State’s, 10,000 seats larger than Washington State’s and 5,000 smaller than Stanford’s. He went on to say that expansion is a consideration but added, “I’m not going to say we wouldn’t look at it down the road, but it’s not on the list right now.”
Why? My opinion is that some colleges are finding what baseball has discovered: Selling out a stadium and charging more tickets is better than selling more tickets at cheaper prices. Sellouts look better and have a nice feel in 45,000-seat stadiums.
Generally, teams can’t sell the last few thousand tickets at a very high price. Plus, if your team is having a bad year, the empty space looks terrible. I’ve seen the Rose Bowl and the L.A. Coliseum when there were tens of thousands of empty seats and it didn’t look good. They had to stretch advertising tarps over the empty areas to make it look better.
This is just my opinion, but I could see Utah increasing to 55,000 some day, but I’m not convinced they’ll want to go much larger.
By the way, Hill said Utah sold 31,000 season tickets this year, which would put the Utes in the upper half of the current Pac-10.
Priorities — Hill said the first two issues to address are improving the sports medicine facilities and getting a softball stadium.
Television — It’s likely not all of Utah’s games will be available on TV next season. The conference currently doesn’t televise every game. Hill did say, however, that he felt Utah would be treated fairly when it comes to televising games.
“I’m optimistic about our situation,” he said. “The conference seemed very good to listen to everybody. (Commissioner) Larry Scott has the big picture.”
Divisional alignments — That will be decided this month when the presidents meet, but Hill said he wasn’t overly worried about it. He claimed that nine of 11 schools are “where our fans are” (Colorado and Washington State being the possible exceptions).
Hill did admit playing in L.A. was “a big issue for everybody” but that the Utes “will get good exposure wherever you are.”
Revenue sharing — This has been publicized before, but just to reiterated, the Utes won’t be flush with money any time soon.
Hill said Utah got $1.8 to $2 million in TV money from the Mountain West Conference. It could be nine to 10 times that much with the Pac-12. However, next year Utah gets none of the TV money, which he thought was fair. That’s because often teams need to buy into a conference by paying an entry fee, but Utah opted instead to defer TV money. Utah will get a 25 percent share in 2012, 50 percent in 2013, 75 percent in 2014 and 100 percent thereafter.
More on talks with Hill tomorrow in Rockmonster Unplugged. You may also want to see Wednesday’s column at Deseretnews.com