Welcome to the Big 12, Utah fans. Here’s where you might be headed next.

Armed with dozens of doughnuts, Urban Meyer boarded the train as the sun peeked over the ridges of the Wasatch Mountains early one morning.

Utah’s head coach jumped on at a TRAX station in Sandy around 5 a.m. and rode to the University of Utah where his Utes were preparing for practice.

When Meyer was hired by the U. in 2002, the football team practiced in a giant inflatable bubble on Guardsman Way. That didn’t fly with Meyer.

Utah’s former Director of Events and Facility Management Steve Pyne remembered getting a call from then-Athletics Director Chris Hill, telling him to meet the school’s new coach on campus late one Saturday night — and to bring a pencil and notepad.

“Urban was going through the old football facilities like, ‘That’ll change and that’ll change,” Pyne recalled. “I’m just sitting behind him going, ‘Holy smokes. How are we getting this money?’”

That’s one reason Meyer ended up riding public transportation to practice. The former Utah head coach searched for local support everywhere he could, even if it meant handing out tasty treats on the train.

In 2004, Utah’s Spence Eccles Field House, a 74,000-square-foot indoor training facility that cost $6 million, opened.

“He got that thing built in eight months at the start of the season,” Pyne said, “and I think that was a game changer for our commitment to football.”

The U. has put a lot into the sport. The school’s football expenses in 2002 were around $4.5 million (26.6% of total expenses) to now $51.8 million (41% of total). It’s also become almost three-quarters of the department’s revenue up from less than a third in the early 2000s.

Insiders credit that with helping Utah position itself to first join the Pac-12 and then, eventually, to survive its collapse.

“We knew that football is king, and that’s very obvious,” Hill, the former Utah athletic director, told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We put as much as we could into investing in it.”

As the Utes enter a new era in the Big 12, football remains the driving force that can help the U. position itself for success, whether that’s winning a Big 12 championship, or jumping ship to a bigger league if the time comes.

How Utah joined the Pac-12 and survived its death

The bells and whistles of slot machines echoed off the walls of the Bellagio hotel and casino, while the last remaining members of the Pac-12 Conference treated themselves to an assortment of cocktails, wine and hors d’oeuvres last month in Las Vegas.

Once known as the “Conference of Champions,” the 12 had become a party of two, leaving just Oregon State and Washington State behind to pick up the pieces.

UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon bolted for the Big Ten.

Utah was among the four institutions that jumped ship into the Big 12 last summer.

“I will say Utah was a positive partner and advocate right up until the end,” Theresa Gould, the fledgling conference’s new commissioner, said as Washington State’s mascot, “Butch T. Cougar,” manned the DJ booth in the ballroom. “The whole thing was really disappointing and disheartening, there’s no question.”

Back when Meyer was passing out pastries to passengers on the train, Utah could only dream of joining a power conference.

Then Hill, the longtime AD, put together a master plan to grant Meyer’s wishes. “We just tried to make sure that we had resources and the opportunity to be in the upper part of the league we were in,” Hill said. And the Utes ended the 2004-05 season undefeated, busting into the BCS and beating Pittsburgh 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl in front of a national TV audience, a sign for what was to come over the next two decades.

By 2011, following six consecutive winning seasons — including a marquee win over Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl — the Utes’ footprint grew enough under new head coach Kyle Whittingham that they earned an invite from the Pac-10.

“We were all like, ‘Holy crap. What is going on?” Pyne said. “This kind of put us on the map for the university as a whole. Our medical center, our research centers, our engineering, our high-end donors, the Huntsmans, the Eccles, the Marriotts and those types of people had to be elated because now they’re being put in a wide open market among the leaders of the West.”

Once the Utes joined the Power 5, now the Power 4, investment again increased. The Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Center, a 150,000-square-foot, $32 million facility, opened in the fall of 2013, two years after Utah’s Pac-12 move.

“We had to bring other sports along, just to make sure that we had the breadth and depth of the program that would match the Pac-12,” Hill said. “But at the end of the day, success in football really established us.”

By 2023, Utah’s athletic department posted a total operating revenue of $126.2 million, which was driven mostly by football, accounting for $92.5 million of Utah’s 2023 overall income.

That, in part, made the Utes an attractive suitor for the Big 12, when the Pac-12 ultimately crumbled at its foundation.

“They don’t have to make the jump to the Grand Canyon anymore,” Hill said. “It was unfortunate that the Pac-12 went down, but at the same time, they’re in the mix now and that’s what matters.”

So why did the Utes, led by athletic director Mark Harlan, decamp the Pac-12, a conference it yearned to be a part of in the 2000s? The answer lies in the ever-changing rat race of conference realignment and lucrative media-rights agreements. Last summer, then-Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff failed to secure a long-term grant of rights agreement with the 10 remaining member institutions of the conference.

Hope fizzled out and money lay elsewhere. Football — and the revenue it generates — has further cemented itself as the driving force of college athletics.

Hill expects football’s influence over college athletics to continue to grow as revenue-sharing — essentially a $22 million salary cap that will soon allow schools to directly pay their athletes — and conference realignment spurred by millions of dollars in television rights take precedence in the modern collegiate landscape.

Programs with the most financial resources will likely rise to the top and survive the next round of conference realignment. Oregon State and Washington State are just the first examples of abandonment in the conference realignment arms race.

Just ask Gould, who was in Des Moines, Iowa, spending time with her 87-year-old mother before she hopped on an emergency Zoom call last August, only to see the Pac-12 dissolve before her very eyes.

“Nobody in their wildest imagination thought we would be at this place,” Gould said. “I don’t think anything is out of the realm of possibility at this point.”

‘If you’re not in the ballpark, you don’t have a shot’

Inside Robert Blechen’s office at Utah’s operation facilities, manilla folders are stacked to the brim, papers are spread out on his desk and a packet listing all the commitments to every Big 12 program hangs from his wall.

It’s been nearly a year since Blechen became the Utah football team’s general manager, a sign that college football is further professionalizing its model. His job consists of phoning recruits, planning events or building the foundation for Utah’s upcoming recruiting class.

Hiring a general manager is a step that many college football programs are taking ahead of a potential revenue-sharing model, which is why the Utes elevated Blechen internally.

“It was definitely needed for the program to get someone who’s only looking at football operations all day,” Blechen told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m not tied to a certain position or a side of the ball. I’m looking for what’s best for the team.”

Blechen confirmed that his role will be enhanced once the Utes fully commit to the $22 million revenue-sharing cap implemented by the pending House v. NCAA settlement. The Utes and Blechen have spent the past year studying “7-8 NFL franchises” and seeing how they manage their salary cap.

According to Blechen, the U. is potentially preparing to dedicate $10 million to $12 million solely to its football program, which could take up nearly 54% of the Utes’ salary cap under the revenue-sharing provisions. That figure is not set in stone, as Title IX and other factors play out in the courts, but Blechen is expecting a significant commitment nonetheless.

“There’s two main models,” Blechen said “(One is) with an inexpensive quarterback where you build the roster around him or where you have the established, high-paid quarterback.

“We’re definitely going to need that money, whether it’s $10 million, $12 million, $15 million. … If you’re not in the ballpark, you don’t have a shot.”

Like Utah, other Big 12 programs have the same vision, especially as the conference tries to keep up with the major powers of the Big Ten and SEC. This summer, talks of a potential private-equity infusion — partnering with the CVC Capital Partners — within the conference gained steam, which would infuse millions to each member institution.

There has also been chatter about a potential naming rights deal with All-State that could ultimately rename the Big 12 to the AllState 12 in one scenario. When asked about it at Big 12 Media Days, Harlan indicated that anything, including private capital, remains a possibility for the Utes.

Harlan, meanwhile, noted the Utes will not cut funding to Olympic programs in Salt Lake City.

“We cannot have any of our Olympic sports do anything else but move forward,” he said. “We’re not going to allow anybody to sit still. That’s not why I’m in this business or why our coaches are in this business. … We’re just looking at this as a net positive for us with a lot of decisions to make going forward.”

Like Utah, Arizona State is also preparing for its first Big 12 season and ASU athletic director Graham Rossini knows football and basketball remain a critical piece of Arizona State’s financial future.

“For every athletic department, we can’t be shy about that,” Rossini told The Salt Lake Tribune. “The most important thing for all of our sports is to have full football stadiums and full basketball arenas, and we departmentally need to figure out a way to drive those outcomes and not only rely on wins because that just puts unfair pressure on our coaches and staff.”

Arizona too is feeling the squeeze of the House Settlement. Wildcats Athletics Director Desireé Reed-Francois inherited an athletic program with $171 million in athletic facilities debt and $95.7 million of internal loans from the university. Reed-Francois is committed to funding Arizona’s $22 million revenue cap at the highest of levels despite its financial strain.

“We’re committed to participating at the highest levels and remaining competitive,” Reed-Francois told The Tribune. “We owe that to our student athletes. We owe that to our fans, our campus and our state.”

It’s an investment administrators feel they have to make while they still have a seat at the table.

“This is a business,” Blechen said. “It’s called revenue sharing because this is generating revenue. These guys are (basically) professional players, right? So, there’ll be some tough decisions to have to be made.”

‘Utah is all in on this new conference’

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark strolled across the turf of Allegiant Stadium, donning a perfectly tailored suit and polished shoes, greeting the old and new Big 12 athletic directors in Las Vegas last month.

His new conference now stretches from West Virginia to the Rocky Mountain West with the addition of Utah and new four-corner schools this summer. Despite the losses of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC, a conference that once seemed weak is now 16 teams strong.

Yormark commonly says the conference “is open for business,” and that could be the case with Florida State and Clemson emerging as potential business partners. It wasn’t long ago when false rumors were circulating about Utah courting the ACC and leaving the Big 12, much like it did to the Pac-12.

But so far, Utah remains committed to its new home.

“Utah is all in on this conference,” Yormark told The Tribune. “I mean, that (ACC rumor) was just noise, and we were somewhat dismissive of it. That didn’t make any sense.

“We’re very like minded as far as where we’re going, how we want to be aggressive and innovative. And I think that speaks to the DNA of Utah. This is their new home, and I expect them to be here for a very long time.”

But how long is long in the lawless world of conference realignment?

For now, the Big 12 is seemingly Utah’s best option, especially with the conference winner virtually guaranteed a spot in the newly expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff.

And the Utes are set to earn a full share for the Big 12′s new $2.3 billion media rights agreement with FOX and ESPN, according to the Big 12′s contract with the university. That means Utah will get roughly $8 million more in TV payouts than Apple TV reportedly had offered to give the Pac-12 schools before negotiations and the conference collapsed.

But, if the Pac-12 serves as an example, things can blow up fast.

It may be only a matter of time before the Power 4 becomes the Power 2.

“I think we’re going down that road,” Whittingham said at Big 12 Media Days. “I think you’ll see that in the next 20 months to four years.

“They’ll govern themselves and it’ll be more of a minor league and NFL model.”

The Big Ten and SEC will likely serve as the major players in any future conference transitions. They have a lot of money. They have blue blood programs. The pair of conferences also have the clout to choose who they want to join their exclusive band.

With that, Utah might only fit into one, especially in the eyes of Hill, who helped them transition to the big stage of the Power 4 in the first place.

“I would think the University of Utah would fit — much better in so many aspects — with the Big Ten if it got down to two leagues,” Hill said, “And, I think all of us are thinking it’s going to go down one more shift.

“I would sure think that the Big Ten would be a really good match for them, and I think the Big Ten schools would be happy to have the Utes.”

This week, though, is the start of Utah’s Big 12 era.

As Utah looks toward the future of its football program, winning and finding ways to stay ahead of the curve are essential. And, that starts with prioritizing NIL, particularly in the football program.

“NIL is the number one (factor) in assembling and maintaining your roster,” Whittingham said last Monday. “It’s almost like the NFL was at one time. The NFL facilities used to be pretty average, and they’d sink all the money to pay contracts. Now, lately, they’ve been building some incredible facilities.

“You have to make a decision. You can’t have it all, at least most of us can’t have it all. And, so you have to decide where you’re going to put your emphasis (in funding). And right now, NIL is the single biggest thing that moves the needle.”

In 2003, it was about investing in facilities.

Now? It’s NIL and revenue-sharing money.

Tomorrow ... we’ll see.

But it will likely come back to football.

All the while, Washington State and Oregon State survey their opportunities from the outside looking in, missing out on the next phase of realignment and losing out on future revenue shares.

“Our two schools were probably ones on the front end of all of this,” WSU athletic director Anne McCoy told The Tribune. “We’re not going to be the last programs that are on the end of this.”

That’s not a risk Utah wants to take.

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