Utah was in our conference as of Saturday, when we just played them, but maybe not now? This is a mite strange:

https://www.rugbymag.com/men%27s-di-college/7622-report-indicates-utah-rugby-suspended.html

this year, just a club team. How is the Pac-12 and the NCAA going to manage this?

Rugby right now is NEITHER a PAC-12 nor a NCAA sport, as I understand it. Collegiate rugby here is administered by "USA Rugby", and the organization of teams is undergoing a big change. A few years back, Cal was in a Northern California conference that included Stanford, Davis, St. Mary's, Chico and others, but now they are trying to create a western conference that mimics the PAC 12. called the PAC Rugby Conference, they have 6 teams: OSU, Cal, UCLA, Arizona, ASU, and Utah. I assume the plan is to get as many of the other 6 PAC-12 schools in as they can, but the problem is one of skill disparity: some schools are clearly "D-1" level (e.g. Cal, UCLA, Utah), and other schools with rugby teams might be rated as D-2 or below (e.g. USC, Washington).

Sounds like the Univ of Utah punished the team for unnamed issues by stripping their use of the University name in the fall and now they are banned from playing...

Thanks for the heads up Chalcid. I was more than moderately surprised at the weird lack of activity on the Utes rugby webpage, and in trying to follow up on your post have been unable to connect to the Utes Facebook page. I hope, for the sake of the sport, that the Utes are able to "put it together" again. I was looking forward to their match against BYU. In fact, it was going to be video steamed via KSL in Salt Lake City. I sure don't like the looks of this.

chalcidbear;842109716 said:

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Utah was in our conference as of Saturday, when we just played them, but maybe not now? This is a mite strange:

https://www.rugbymag.com/men%27s-di-college/7622-report-indicates-utah-rugby-suspended.html

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I bet they just found out about the beer...

Rugbymag now says 3 year suspension. Huge blow to PAC rugby.

Edit: if you follow this story it actually doesn't make sense. Something very fishy.

socaliganbear;842110112 said:

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Rugbymag now says 3 year suspension. Huge blow to PAC rugby.

Edit: if you follow this story it actually doesn't make sense. Something very fishy.

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Utah is not BYU. For starters, there is plenty of booze to go around. its a lot more like a regular campus than most folks imagine. At the basketball game in Salt Lake this year, I had a long talk with the Ute mascot, who is on the rugby team (or at least was - he was fighting the injury bug). He kept saying how the Utes were trying to emulate Cal Rugby on and off the field, and they clearly get the idea of scholar athletes. They were studying Jack Clark, etc. Its a shame all this happening for some unexplained reason. Cal having a strong opponent at this critical time could only help.

wifeisafurd;842110135 said:

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Utah is not BYU. For starters, there is plenty of booze to go around. its a lot more like a regular campus than most folks imagine. At the basketball game in Salt Lake this year, I had a long talk with the Ute mascot, who is on the rugby team (or at least was - he was fighting the injury bug). He kept saying how the Utes were trying to emulate Cal Rugby on and off the field, and they clearly get the idea of scholar athletes. They were studying Jack Clark, etc. Its a shame all this happening for some unexplained reason. Cal having a strong opponent at this critical time could only help.

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So this is the weirdness: last year when the violation occurred their punishment was probation and not being able to use the Utah name. Hence the Salt Lake City Rugby Club was born. But when 7's came around and then spring rugby in the Pac, the team was once again using the University of Utah name. So fast forward to this week and the admin is now saying "oh hey you're not suppose to call yourselves Utah, remember?" And slaps them with a full on suspension. This, after months and months of publicly playing as UofU. Chris Hill just noticed??

There's probably something more serious with the initial violation than was made out to be. Perhaps something CH now sees as too big to look past. It is interesting that this comes out the same week of the Rutgers debacle, and in the midst of another athletic scandal which Hill is fighting.

norcalbuff;842110326 said:

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There was a comment in one of the SL Trib articles that the director of club sports at Utah is a family member of Utah HC Blake Burdette's ex-wife and that she was carrying out a vendetta. If true, that would explain the absurdly harsh punishment and the lack of response from UU on the matter. Someone (Rugbymag, SL Trib, Deseret News, etc.) needs to dig a lot deeper on this to find out what really happened. In the meantime here is Utah Rugby's statement:

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There are also rumors that the 2012 incident was more severe than just alcohol. That it in fact involved a female trainer. Who knows. Someone's not behing honest here.

norcalbuff;842110348 said:

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I've heard it was a drunk individual assaulting the trainer (gender unspecified). But if it was really serious, there would have been arrests. The lack of transparency in the whole deal makes it seem like amateur hour.

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Ditto. If she decided against pressing charges at the time, the Uni might have decided against harsher penalties in favor of sweeping it away. But the AD finds itself in much hotter water right now given their other scandals, could have prompted a retroactive punishment. All speculative of course.

socaliganbear;842110333 said:

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There are also rumors that the 2012 incident was more severe than just alcohol. Someone's not behing honest here.

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Yes it was more than just any alcohol it was:

http://www.wasatchbeers.com/polygporter.html

:beer:

bar20;842110369 said:

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Yes it was more than just any alcohol it was:

http://www.wasatchbeers.com/polygporter.html

:beer:

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they have at Squatters (the pub outlet for this and other beers). Really want to **** a LDS woman off, show her a bottle of Provo Girl. Like I mentioned, Utah is like most other campuses not named BYU, so a lot more than beer must be involved. As menitoned by others, the lack of transparency makes it seem far worse, but who really knows.

The Beer is pretty good too.