Fmr-Utah President Bernie Machen had been working on getting Utah into the AAU since 1997. We started getting vetted for membership by the AAU since 2005 or 2006. AAU membership has been a long time coming, and courtesy of over 20-yrs of preparation. When Utah was offered, we accepted IMMEDIATELY!!!
Our advancement to the AAU exactly mirrored our advancement to the Pac-12: It took years of “vision” and “preparation”, and when the invitation finally came, there was no need for hesitation. We’ve long known what we wanted, and once it presented itself to us, our decision had already been made decades ago.
FWIW, if you’d asked me sometime between 1997 and 2009 what our chances were of joining the Pac-10 and the AAU, I would have given AAU membership odds in the 90% range, and Pac-10 membership in the 15% range. Ironically, the Pac-10 invitation came nearly a decade before the AAU. But whatever. We finally got it, and we got BOTH!
GO UTES!!!
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