To understand where BYU athletics is going, it’s helpful to know where the Cougars have been.
Things are moving pretty fast in Provo lately. BYU is in Year 2 of the Big 12 after decades on the fringes of the power conferences. The Cougars recently paid a pretty penny to hire the NBA’s top assistant coach to head its men’s basketball program. BYU is competitive in the new NIL space and puts on one of the most lavish and impressive game day experiences for fans at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
But things were not always that way.
Val Hale worked in the BYU Athletics department for 24 years, including five as the athletic director. Operating on a shoestring budget (at least compared to most universities), paying their coaches well below market rate and taking a conservative approach was the department’s mode of operation.
Hale has written a new book, “Out of the Blue,” providing an inside look at his tenure with BYU Athletics that ran from 1981 to 2004.
“Ever since I left athletics 20 years ago — 20 years ago this fall — I’ve been telling people stories,” Hale said. “They would tell me, ‘You need to write a book about your time with BYU Athletics.’ Once my wife Nancy and I got home from serving a mission and I retired, I started doing it. I’ve been a writer before (Hale was previously a columnist for the Daily Herald and has had two other books published) so I would sit down and spend an hour or two on it. It took me about a year on and off.
“I self published the book and it was fun having the opportunity to tell what goes on behind the scenes in an athletic department. I don’t write a lot about the games, but how we got things done and some of the personalities I worked with. The people that have read it have seemed to enjoy it.”
In the preface, Hale wrote, “My intent with this book is not to exhume skeletons or dig up dirt about people I worked with. There are things I won’t share because it wouldn’t be appropriate. Rather, I want to give BYU fans a picture of what it’s like to be an athletic director and how things unfolded behind the success.”
Hale’s book is definitely not a “tell-all” journal, rather, it is a fascinating look at how BYU earned that success despite that conservative approach that was so different than the schools it competed against.
Hale worked for many years under former BYU AD Glen Tuckett, who was as frugal and conservative as they come.
“If Glen had been in congress we would have no national debt,” Hale said. “He didn’t want to spend a penny and was very tight with money.”
Tuckett didn’t even want the public address announcer to raise his voice during games.
Things have certainly changed in that regard.
“You really have to hand it to the BYU Marketing team now,” Hale said. “They’ve made the game production as good as it gets. Glen would have cringed at that. He would have gone ballistic. I think the reason they are doing all of those things is because they are charging a lot of money for tickets. No one goes away thinking it was boring or not fun. With the drone show, Cosmo, the Cougarettes, the band and all of the other things, they really get people to want to be there instead of home watching on TV.”
In writing “Out of the Blue,” Hale said he wanted to highlight the people he worked with and influenced his life, such as former BYU basketball coach Tony Ingle and football equipment manager Floyd Johnson.
“Any time you write your memoirs, it’s kind of scary,” Hale said. “You’re putting yourself out there. I didn’t know if people would like how its not about games but about people that made an impact on me. So far, the feedback has been really positive. They’ve enjoyed a peek behind the curtain. These are not necessarily the stories they’ve heard or seen, but they get a little different perspective. Each person resonates with different parts of the book.”
Hale details how certain venues were built, imaginative marketing strategies, his favorite memories and his abrupt dismissal in the fall of 2004.
Hale told the administration when he took the athletic director job that if they ever felt he wasn’t getting it done, he would step down. Instead, President Cecil O. Samuelson and Advancement Vice President Fred Skousen unceremoniously fired Hale and women’s athletic director Elaine Michaelis two days after the Cougar football team upset Notre Dame in early September of 2004, giving them both very little lead time to inform their families before the news conference.
Samuelson and Skousen indicated the release of Hale and Michaelis from their duties was part of a new overall plan for the department that included combining men’s and women’s athletics, but many felt that the treatment of Hale (24 years in the athletic department) and Michaelis (42 years at BYU) was reprehensible. Hale said in the book that he has forgiven Samuelson and Skousen, even accepting an invitation to lunch from Skousen a few years later. Hale never worked for BYU again, instead taking several administrative positions at Utah Valley University and in state government.
“”BYU is definitely unique in many ways,” Hale said about his time at the school. “In the book I wrote that the athletic department was as successful as the president at the time allowed it to be. It was the same for the athletic director. I was fortunate. (BYU president) Merrill Bateman was very supportive. He was able to push through building Miller Park (for baseball), the Student Athlete Building and the Indoor Practice Facility. He wasn’t afraid to take things to the church’s board of trustees, even if it was a tough ask. My perception is that the last few presidents at BYU have been extremely supportive of athletics.”
The book is available in paperback and Kindle form and Hale said he’s working on getting it recorded for an audio version.
Probably the best line in the book comes from Hale’s wife.
Among endorsements from former BYU Athletic Director Rondo Fehlberg, high school principal Peter Glahn and Cougar fan Kib Jensen, Nancy Hale writes in one of the blurbs, “It’s better than I thought it would be.”
This post was originally published on here
