In response to reports that BYU’s talks with the Big East had broken down after all indications initially pointed to a deal, athletic director Tom Holmoe sat down to discuss the negotiations on KSL Radio Monday evening. Holmoe fielded several questions from Greg Wrubell and Mark Lyons and discussed the pros and cons of football independence versus membership in a BCS conference.
Holmoe confirmed the Big East was set to invite BYU for football-only membership.
“At that point in time, [the Big East conference was] eager to make this happen and get BYU on board,” he said. “We weren’t at that time ready to do it, so we gave them a proposal. In that proposal, we said ‘we could do that; we could sign on right now, if there were TV rights for our home games,’ but that would have been certain–we would have known exactly what we were getting into at that time.”
He said the two parties had then reached a temporary “impasse,” but it was inaccurate to state that the talks had “blown up” but rather that they had slowed down in recent days. “I think it’s misconstrued that we came in leading that we had to have this [television deal to join]. We tried to come up with a possible solution once we had come to an impasse.”
Holmoe, who has been at the head of BYU’s athletic department since 2005, also criticized the media for what he called erroneous reporting about the university’s negotiating tactics. He denied anonymous claims that BYU’s legal team had been purposely onerous in preventing a deal from coming together.
“There’s some more misinformation now, but BYU tries its best not to play out its discussions in the media,” Holmoe said, “when people find sources, or make up sources, or sometimes there’s information out there that’s not accurate.”
He also insisted that in earlier negotiations, the university never received an invite from the Big 12 conference and TV rights were not the reason for being left out of its expansion.
“We were told by the Big 12 that we were a team they were interested in, but we didn’t even have discussions about television,” Holmoe said.
Holmoe was joined on the show by coach Bronco Mendenhall, who acknowledged no schedule will please every fan, but said that after this inaugural year of independence the team’s opponents will become more intriguing with each season.
“This idea that independence is a negative, I’m not buying it,” Mendenhall told Wrubell. “We can put together a great schedule, a diverse schedule, a schedule that’s as good as anyone’s in the country.”
Mendenhall, who like Holmoe was hired to his position in 2005, said the football program is in better shape than a year ago—despite the fact the late-season schedule has been difficult for fans.
“Was the Mountain West Conference the pathway to a national championship? The answer is clearly ‘no,’ ” Mendenhall said. “Once that’s off the table we’re going someplace else, which we did.”
