The Tulsa World recently submitted a state open records request regarding emails sent to University of Oklahoma administrators that relate to OU's involvement in athletic conference realignment.
Here is letter from Warren Metcalf, a BYU graduate and associate (tenured) professor of history in OU. It regards the Big 12's potential recruitment of BYU as a replacement for teams that leave the conference.
Having some background with both the LDS Church and BYU, I heartily agree with this professor's candid evaluation of the role that sports plays at BYU, and additionally, how BYU regards the role of research at a university.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:06:42 AM
Dear Mr. Castiglione,
As a fan of OU sports and an OU faculty member, I have been watching the unfolding drama with Texas A&M’s departure from the Big 12 with interest. I hope you will forgive my presumptuousness in writing, but there is one part of this drama that is of particular concern to me: the emerging, media-driven consensus that the Big 12 should invite BYU into the conference. I have two degrees from BYU and was a football season ticket holder there for a solid decade, so I have some insight into the broader implications of this potential development.
First, let me say that I understand the impulse to try to wind the clock backward to recreate the Big 12. Nebraska and Colorado were great rivals and with the impending departure of A&M, the Big 12 will have lost a quarter of its original members – and three of its strongest programs. The temptation to replace them will be irresistible. Is BYU the answer? My personal belief is that inviting them would be a serious mistake.
Why do I feel this way? To begin, BYU’s reputation as a football powerhouse is largely an illusion, a relic of their best era: the 1980s. The team enjoyed considerable success because their coach, LaVell Edwards, hired a series of offensive coordinators who were at the forefront of developing passing offenses. Mike Holmgren was one of them, Norm Chow another. BYU had a cutting-edge offense in those years, but they also enjoyed success because they played in weak conferences – first the WAC, and then the Mountain West. It was relatively easy to win at least eight games a year when lining up against UTEP, Wyoming, and Colorado State, or UNLV. These intermountain schools had a hard time recruiting elite athletes, a fact which obscured BYU’s most glaring weakness: an overall lack of team speed.
The insular religious culture at BYU made it extremely difficult to recruit the best athletes, and the LDS Church’s history of institutional racism made it almost impossible to recruit the best African American athletes. (I assume you know that the Mormon Church refused to allow anyone of African ancestry to be ordained to priesthood until forced to abandon the practice in 1978. In Mormonism, all worthy male member are ordained to a ranked “order” of priesthood, so the ban was much more pervasive than one might initially think.)
In the intervening decades, not much has changed. Nor is it likely to – BYU still doesn’t recruit many elite players, and even fewer African American ones. Consider this: in the past decade, BYU has never had a recruiting class ranked in the top 25 by Rivals.com, and they’ve only cracked the top 50 three times. Their best ever class was ranked 36th in 2002.
Today BYU no longer surprises anyone on the football field with their passing attack. Although they routinely beat the weak schools of their former conferences, they lose to teams from better conferences. Occasionally they manage to embarrass a good team early in the season (as Oklahoma discovered in 2009). Last year they were 7-6, with no wins against quality teams. They were beaten by Utah State, Nevada, Utah, and Air Force, while the better teams – TCU, and Florida State – beat them
handily. Their success in conference is largely owing to their ability to exploit an NCAA rule that allows players to depart for two years to serve Mormon missions. As a result, they often have interior linemen who are 24 or 25 years old, and much more physically mature than opposing linemen.They still lack the overall team speed to compete with the better teams in the Big 12, however. It is my strong belief that
BYU would not be better than a middling team in the conference.
Of course, BYU has a strong fan base and they travel well. Perhaps that is enough for some. Let me suggest that there is another side to this story, and it stems from the fact that BYU is not a traditional university. The sports teams at BYU exist primarily to draw attention to the Mormon Church and its proselyting mission. If BYU is interested in the Big 12, I guarantee you that it has little or nothing to do with an automatic berth in a BCS bowl, but rather everything to do with a calculated decision on the part of the LDS Church hierarchy to generate more exposure, and hence more interest, in Mormonism. I’m not sure if the Big 12 really wants to be a platform for promoting the Mormon religion around this part of the country, but I do know that the relentless proselyting will not wear well with fans at OU and other conference communities. If you discount this prediction, I suggest you contact athletic directors at schools that routinely play BYU and ask them what their patrons think of BYU and its fan base.
What then, of the Big 12? I believe that OU should look to the future and embrace it by migrating – as part of a package with other Big 12 schools, to the PAC 12, making it the PAC 16. The PAC 12 is a great conference comprised of strong, research I institutions of the type that appeal to President Boren and the academic units of the university. I realize that the Big 12 is an athletic conference, but the University of Oklahoma would only benefit from association with outstanding universities such as California-Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington.
As an aside, it is worth noting that the PAC 10 repeatedly rejected overtures from BYU and most recently passed them over when inviting the University of Utah. Why? Because BYU is not an institution driven by research, open inquiry, and academic freedom. Their graduate programs are limited, especially in the social sciences and humanities, for the obvious reason that the Mormon Church leadership does not want to promote competing belief systems. One has to ask, if BYU was not an attractive enough for the PAC 10, why is it good enough for the Big 12?
I might add that by migrating to a stronger conference, OU would have unique leverage over the University of Texas. The administrators in Austin would have only two choices – become an independent (in all likelihood not a happy scenario for them), or swallow their pride and follow OU into the PAC 16. In so doing, they would have to accept equal revenue sharing and fold their TV network into the regional structure that the PAC 10 is currently building. The resulting 8 team division of the PAC 16 would likely look a lot like the Big 12 South, with the inclusion of two strong Arizona programs and one on the rise at Utah – something like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Kansas (or Texas Tech), Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State – thus negating all the talk about long travel distances to conference games. The division would still be reasonably compact, relatively equal, and highly competitive. Combine the eastern division with the great schools on the West Coast and you would have a true, powerhouse conference.
Again, I hope you will forgive this uninvited letter. My motivations are, I’m sure, the same as yours – I want what is best for the University of Oklahoma and the OU fans.
Thanks for all that you do, and thanks taking the time to read this.
Cordially,
Warren Metcalf
Associate Professor of History
University of Oklahoma
http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/items/OU_emails.pdf
[This message has been edited by Frenas (edited 11/9/2011 7:32a).]
Here is letter from Warren Metcalf, a BYU graduate and associate (tenured) professor of history in OU. It regards the Big 12's potential recruitment of BYU as a replacement for teams that leave the conference.
Having some background with both the LDS Church and BYU, I heartily agree with this professor's candid evaluation of the role that sports plays at BYU, and additionally, how BYU regards the role of research at a university.
----------
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:06:42 AM
Dear Mr. Castiglione,
As a fan of OU sports and an OU faculty member, I have been watching the unfolding drama with Texas A&M’s departure from the Big 12 with interest. I hope you will forgive my presumptuousness in writing, but there is one part of this drama that is of particular concern to me: the emerging, media-driven consensus that the Big 12 should invite BYU into the conference. I have two degrees from BYU and was a football season ticket holder there for a solid decade, so I have some insight into the broader implications of this potential development.
First, let me say that I understand the impulse to try to wind the clock backward to recreate the Big 12. Nebraska and Colorado were great rivals and with the impending departure of A&M, the Big 12 will have lost a quarter of its original members – and three of its strongest programs. The temptation to replace them will be irresistible. Is BYU the answer? My personal belief is that inviting them would be a serious mistake.
Why do I feel this way? To begin, BYU’s reputation as a football powerhouse is largely an illusion, a relic of their best era: the 1980s. The team enjoyed considerable success because their coach, LaVell Edwards, hired a series of offensive coordinators who were at the forefront of developing passing offenses. Mike Holmgren was one of them, Norm Chow another. BYU had a cutting-edge offense in those years, but they also enjoyed success because they played in weak conferences – first the WAC, and then the Mountain West. It was relatively easy to win at least eight games a year when lining up against UTEP, Wyoming, and Colorado State, or UNLV. These intermountain schools had a hard time recruiting elite athletes, a fact which obscured BYU’s most glaring weakness: an overall lack of team speed.
The insular religious culture at BYU made it extremely difficult to recruit the best athletes, and the LDS Church’s history of institutional racism made it almost impossible to recruit the best African American athletes. (I assume you know that the Mormon Church refused to allow anyone of African ancestry to be ordained to priesthood until forced to abandon the practice in 1978. In Mormonism, all worthy male member are ordained to a ranked “order” of priesthood, so the ban was much more pervasive than one might initially think.)
In the intervening decades, not much has changed. Nor is it likely to – BYU still doesn’t recruit many elite players, and even fewer African American ones. Consider this: in the past decade, BYU has never had a recruiting class ranked in the top 25 by Rivals.com, and they’ve only cracked the top 50 three times. Their best ever class was ranked 36th in 2002.
Today BYU no longer surprises anyone on the football field with their passing attack. Although they routinely beat the weak schools of their former conferences, they lose to teams from better conferences. Occasionally they manage to embarrass a good team early in the season (as Oklahoma discovered in 2009). Last year they were 7-6, with no wins against quality teams. They were beaten by Utah State, Nevada, Utah, and Air Force, while the better teams – TCU, and Florida State – beat them
handily. Their success in conference is largely owing to their ability to exploit an NCAA rule that allows players to depart for two years to serve Mormon missions. As a result, they often have interior linemen who are 24 or 25 years old, and much more physically mature than opposing linemen.They still lack the overall team speed to compete with the better teams in the Big 12, however. It is my strong belief that
BYU would not be better than a middling team in the conference.
Of course, BYU has a strong fan base and they travel well. Perhaps that is enough for some. Let me suggest that there is another side to this story, and it stems from the fact that BYU is not a traditional university. The sports teams at BYU exist primarily to draw attention to the Mormon Church and its proselyting mission. If BYU is interested in the Big 12, I guarantee you that it has little or nothing to do with an automatic berth in a BCS bowl, but rather everything to do with a calculated decision on the part of the LDS Church hierarchy to generate more exposure, and hence more interest, in Mormonism. I’m not sure if the Big 12 really wants to be a platform for promoting the Mormon religion around this part of the country, but I do know that the relentless proselyting will not wear well with fans at OU and other conference communities. If you discount this prediction, I suggest you contact athletic directors at schools that routinely play BYU and ask them what their patrons think of BYU and its fan base.
What then, of the Big 12? I believe that OU should look to the future and embrace it by migrating – as part of a package with other Big 12 schools, to the PAC 12, making it the PAC 16. The PAC 12 is a great conference comprised of strong, research I institutions of the type that appeal to President Boren and the academic units of the university. I realize that the Big 12 is an athletic conference, but the University of Oklahoma would only benefit from association with outstanding universities such as California-Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington.
As an aside, it is worth noting that the PAC 10 repeatedly rejected overtures from BYU and most recently passed them over when inviting the University of Utah. Why? Because BYU is not an institution driven by research, open inquiry, and academic freedom. Their graduate programs are limited, especially in the social sciences and humanities, for the obvious reason that the Mormon Church leadership does not want to promote competing belief systems. One has to ask, if BYU was not an attractive enough for the PAC 10, why is it good enough for the Big 12?
I might add that by migrating to a stronger conference, OU would have unique leverage over the University of Texas. The administrators in Austin would have only two choices – become an independent (in all likelihood not a happy scenario for them), or swallow their pride and follow OU into the PAC 16. In so doing, they would have to accept equal revenue sharing and fold their TV network into the regional structure that the PAC 10 is currently building. The resulting 8 team division of the PAC 16 would likely look a lot like the Big 12 South, with the inclusion of two strong Arizona programs and one on the rise at Utah – something like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Kansas (or Texas Tech), Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State – thus negating all the talk about long travel distances to conference games. The division would still be reasonably compact, relatively equal, and highly competitive. Combine the eastern division with the great schools on the West Coast and you would have a true, powerhouse conference.
Again, I hope you will forgive this uninvited letter. My motivations are, I’m sure, the same as yours – I want what is best for the University of Oklahoma and the OU fans.
Thanks for all that you do, and thanks taking the time to read this.
Cordially,
Warren Metcalf
Associate Professor of History
University of Oklahoma
http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/items/OU_emails.pdf
[This message has been edited by Frenas (edited 11/9/2011 7:32a).]
