Gordon Monson: Shame on Utah AD Mark Harlan for complaining about a game that was absolutely not ‘stolen’ from his Utes

It’s official.

We’ve gotten to a point as a society where whenever anybody loses any kind of important contest, it’s stolen from us. And sometimes, too often, the complaining and crying comes from people who should — and maybe do — know better. But they whine, anyway.

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan boohooing over what happened in Saturday night’s Utah-BYU game is nothing short of pathetic. Maybe you’ve already read what he said. Here it is, all spelled out:

“I’ve been an athletic director for 12 years. This game was absolutely stolen from us. We were excited about being in the Big 12, but tonight I am not. We won this game. Someone else stole it from us. I’m very disappointed. I will talk to the commissioner. This is not fair to our team. I am disgusted by the professionalism of the officiating crew tonight.”

Look, everyone gets the disappointment that comes with an emotional loss to an in-state rival. Emotion is a part of sports, particularly in a game like that one.

But who is Harlan to make a statement like that? Is he a trained referee who knows and was right on top of the plays in question? Or is he just another person who refuses to accept their reality, in this case as he moaned and groaned about a team that had just lost its fifth straight?

If you’re a Ute, perhaps you have cried alongside him, and … we get that, too.

Fans get caught up in their fandom enough to see the results of a game shaded by the color — in this case, red — that they wear.

But for a school official, someone who has been an “athletic director for 12 years” to react like this is out of bounds. You’d think Harlan was running for president or some such.

Harlan wasn’t on the field throughout the game. He wasn’t part of every play, the way the refs were. What would he have said had the calls gone a different way? What would he have said had the Utes won the game? He would have said nothing. Everyone can be pretty sure about that.

But now, an AD who might have never wanted to be in the Big 12 to begin with is sure a Utah game against BYU was absolutely stolen from the getup for which he works. And he can be absolutely objective in his view, right?

All his complaints do is throw gas on a fire that rages among Utes fans now that somehow they were persecuted, they were robbed, somehow the refs were either biased or incompetent. Further review of the holding call about which Harlan is crying seems to justify it — the call, not the crying — at least on film.

There are times when officials blow calls, granted. But, in my 45 years of experience covering games, I’ve seen that they are right much more often than they are wrong. Again, if they were wrong in this case, that’s not what the review indicates. Even if the call were questionable, it wouldn’t have warranted the AD’s remarks.

I wonder why Harlan didn’t complain about his team’s defense being unable thereafter to stop BYU’s offense from soaring down the field for the game-winning field goal. And did Harlan have anything further to say about the questionable calls that went against the Cougars?

After the conference fined Harlan $40,000 and publicly reprimanded him for his behavior, the athletic director of 12 years issued another statement but not an apology:

“Last night following our game against BYU, I made clear my feelings related to the game officiating. However, I recognize that there are more appropriate times and avenues to express those concerns, and I accept the consequences of my decision. My comments came after having just left our team locker room where our student-athletes were hurting and upset. The University of Utah is proud to be a member of the Big 12 Conference and we look forward to working with our peers to continue to enhance the league. BYU, Coach Sitake and their coaches and student-athletes are having a terrific season and we wish them the very best.”

I’ve witnessed a lot of wins through the years, a lot of losses. But if school officials made the kinds of statements Harlan did on Saturday night whenever their teams suffered through defeat, the whole endeavor would be called into question. Refs — institutions — that are an inherent part of the game, human though they are, would never be trusted, rendering the entire exercise a waste of time.

Utes might say their athletic director was standing up for his team, standing up for them. They might even praise him. But from a corner that couldn’t have cared less about who won and who lost Saturday night’s game, his bitter comments in the aftermath were more atrocious, more “ridiculous,” as Kyle Whittingham called the happenings, than what actually happened on the field.

But that’s the way it goes these days. Nobody loses, not anymore, they just are robbed of what they believe they deserve. And that’s a disservice and a shame all around, inside and out of sports.