Utah Athletics Department to be Audited by State after BYU Cancellation

Annie Knox and Kyle Goon of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a great story about how the Utah Athletics Department is going to be audited by the State after the cancellation of the basketball series.

You can read his entire article here, which I recommend highly.

Here's my opinion... are you kidding me?! In the article, Goon quotes a couple local representatives, and as it is for typical politicians, there's a lot of talking out of both sides of the mouth. All of them say that they don't want to legislate the on court/field match ups of the school, but here's an interesting quote from one of them, per Goon's article:

"The exclamation point needs to be, 'If you ever, athletic department, feel like you have taken over [the rest of the school]," Rep. Dan McCay warned the U. in a Feb. 4 higher education budget meeting, "we'll get rid of you.' "

"I'd hate for athletic programs to be a distraction like they have been this last year," the Riverton Republican told U. President David Pershing, "especially most recently over some of the antics of your athletic director, as well as your basketball coach."

The second part of that quote is what really bugs me, the AD and coach were a distraction?! If anything, it was everyone else that was the distraction, including prominent law makers tweeting the game should be played. Both Dr. Hill and Coach K took steps in what they viewed as best for the athletic program, and that ticked off some fans, but it also made a lot of fans happy. In turn, some of the media, as well as the aforementioned law makers (and a neighboring school) made a lot of fuss over it, and the coach and AD had to issue a response. Of course, the "we'll get rid of you." quote may be the silliest threat I've ever seen. Really, are you petting a cat and wearing a pinky ring while you're saying this?

At the end of the article you can see Dr. Chris Hill's statement, which is very PC, as you'd expect. Which is no surprise since this is the first audit of this kind in the state, of any of the in-state schools.

Here's the bottom line, it sounds like the State would like to force this rivalry, and they're using this audit to punish the U for cancelling it, which is an immense waste of tax dollars. I think auditing the school, who's budget is growing each year based off Power-5/Pac-12 TV contracts, isn't a bad thing in itself, because of the increase of money coming in, although Dr. Hill and other administrators have been pretty transparent with money allocation. With that said, using this audit as a punishment for cancelling the series is stupid.

What are your thoughts?