‘That just doesn’t happen’: Former BYU AD is stunned by Mark Harlan’s post-game incident

As University of Utah athletic director Mark Harlan berated the officials and the Big 12 after the Utes’ 22-21 loss to BYU on Saturday, Val Hale couldn’t believe what he was watching.
“You know that emoji with the big wide eyes?” Hale told the “Y’s Guys” podcast this week. “I think every athletic director in the country had that exact expression when they saw that because something like that just doesn’t happen. It goes against everything athletic directors stand for.”
Steaming over a defensive holding call against the Utes on BYU’s final possession, Harlan marched into the press room and declared, “I have been an athletic director for 12 years. This game was absolutely stolen from us. We won this game. Someone else stole it from us!”
Hale served as BYU’s athletic director between 1999-2004 and spent years before that working on the Provo campus in marketing, fundraising and media relations.
“To actually go up, unannounced, and seat yourself in front of the press and make a statement like that, it surprised me for three reasons,” Hale said. “First, it surprised me that he did it. Second, it surprised me since his president (Taylor Randall) had just come out with the ‘Rival Right’ campaign. And third, it surprised me that he attacked the Big 12.”
In addition to denouncing the officials, Harlan turned his wrath on the conference that rescued Utah from slipping into obscurity after the Pac-12 collapsed.
“We were excited about being in the Big 12, but tonight I am not,” Harlan said. “I will talk to the (Big 12) commissioner. This was not fair to our team.”
Utah joined Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State as new members of the Big 12 prior to the season.
“It’s one thing to complain about the officials, but to take a shot at the Big 12, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? This is your first year?” Hale said. “It really caught me off guard. I didn’t see that coming.”
The Big 12 responded by hitting Harlan with a $40,000 dollar fine and a public reprimand. Harlan issued a statement where he accepted the penalty but offered little else.
“It was not an apology, that’s what I think,” Hale said. “It was the most non-statement thing I’ve seen. He tried to give BYU a compliment and everything, but he did not apologize in the least in that statement. I’m waiting for Taylor Randall to weigh in. Because (of the fact) he was so public in his ‘Rival Right’ campaign, I can’t imagine they would sit and let this go.”
Hale can empathize with Harlan to an extent. BYU suffered through three losing seasons on his watch. In his new book, “Out of the Blue,” Hale described the job of an athletic director as a great job when your team is winning and a lousy job when you are losing.
Utah is 1-5 in the Big 12 and in 15th place.
“Now, put yourself in his shoes. Utah is predicted to win. They come into the season thinking they are going to be in the playoffs and now, suddenly, he’s lost his fifth-straight game,” Hale said. “He has to be under tremendous pressure. He can’t go anywhere without people grabbing him and saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on and I have the solution, and you need to do this or that.’ It probably just built up and finally boiled over. It’s tremendous pressure.”
Harlan’s antics on Saturday were not only stinging, but they were recorded and certain to resurface for years to come. His rivalry moment in front of the cameras “will live in infamy,” Hale said.
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.