Ex-BYU a.d. sees different world

Glen Tuckett would be the first to tell you he's not exactly what you'd call cutting edge these days.

"I'm a yellow pad guy," he says. "I don't really know the Internet."

It's been 17 years since Tuckett was BYU's athletic director, a position he held for 17 years, and 14 years since he was athletic director at the University of Alabama before retiring as a full-time administrator.

The college athletic landscape has changed dramatically since then, especially in football. The BCS; coaches making $4 million a year; bowl games in Boise and Detroit — all new since Tuckett's days.

He recently returned from the annual meetings of the American Baseball Coaches Association, where he's been chairman of the board for the past six years, with a tidbit of information that says volumes about the mushrooming nature of college sports.

"I heard a statistic there that the average salary of baseball coaches in the (Southeastern Conference) is $600,000," he says. "That's the average!"

Back when he was coaching baseball, that would have paid the salary for the entire athletic department.

"Proliferation" is the word Tuckett uses to describe what's been happening to college athletics the past decade and a half.

"We used to get by more bare bones without all the frills," he says. "And then somebody started frilling, and everybody else had to frill right along with them.

"It's not the same game; I'm the first guy to admit that," he continues. "But it isn't as foreign to the same game as some want to make it sound. I think everyone's caught up in spending and trying to keep up with the Joneses. That is the formula for fiscal failure."

Tuckett brings all this up in the context of what his old school is up to these days.

For the past two weeks, BYU has been the subject of more tweets than Brett Favre as the school considers leaving the Mountain West Conference in favor of some sort of hybrid status that would make the football team an independent.

The University of Utah's pending move to the Pac-10 Conference and a broadcasting revenue shortfall are reportedly the factors behind the possible changes.

The thought of BYU going independent during his tenure, says Tuckett, was never a serious consideration.

That's because, back then, BYU's local TV and radio broadcasting revenue was independent — so the football team didn't have to be.