Utah was very deserving and they got in. BYU and several other schools are also deserving and are still left out. The evidence would suggest that being deserving is necessary but insufficient. You could have been Harvard - it still wouldn't mean the the PAC -10 had to invite you to join their club. The PAC was going for Texas. Utah was used as a pawn in a power play against the Texas Legislature. I give a huge congratulations to Utah. It has worked out incredibly well for a very deserving school, but at the end of the day Utah was lucky that things played out the way that they did. You could have just easily stayed on the outside looking in.