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Provo • Saying he feels like "it is going to be a great year for BYU sports," an enthusiastic, engaging and sometimes funny BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe addressed a class of about 250 campus visitors on Wednesday as part of his annual Education Week appearance.

"I really feel like I have the best job in the world" overseeing BYU's 623 student-athletes and 21 NCAA-sanctioned sports, Holmoe told the crowd before using most of the allotted hour to answer questions.

Surprisingly, the Q&A session was more than half over before an attendee asked Holmoe to talk about the firestorm on sports talk radio stations Tuesday that caused University of Utah athletic director Chris Hill to release a statement acknowledging that BYU and Utah had agreed to extend their football series contract to games in 2019 and 2020.

Holmoe said he was "cool" with the fact Hill prematurely unveiled the contract before it had been signed by both parties and "totally understands" why he did it.

Some details still have to be worked out, but "it is as official as it is going to be, so yeah, we are going to play some games [against Utah]," Holmoe said, but joked that the contract really isn't on his desk, as Hill figuratively suggested it was.

Most of the questions were related to football — the Cougars open the 2015 season on Sept. 5 at Nebraska — and BYU's unique place in the current college sports landscape as a football independent and member of the West Coast Conference in almost all of its other sports.

Asked to assess BYU's chances of getting into the Big 12 or another Power 5 conference, Holmoe said he "really can't comment on that," except to say that "the barriers, the objections, I have read them all" and that BYU is "doing everything we can to put our [student-athletes] in position to compete at the highest levels, because that's what BYU athletes deserve."

He said joining a conference in football only and leaving the other sports in the WCC "is [not] a viable option in this environment, for the time being."

Holmoe said he has a "really good relationship" with Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson and most of the schools in the conference that the Cougars left four years ago. Asked whether BYU would ever return to the MWC, he said, "I would never say never about anything like that."

He said one particular MWC school, which he did not name, still "doesn't want a thing to do with us" and "is mad at us," but that relations are slowly thawing.

Other highlights of Holmoe's appearance:

• The first question was about Charles West, the running back from Texas who got into some legal trouble about the time he was signing with BYU last February. "He is under the jurisdiction right now of the courts [in Texas], so we are not allowed to comment on that," Holmoe said, noting that West's best friend on his high school football team is from an LDS family, and that West spent a lot of time in their home and they "told us he was a great kid."

• Holmoe said Jamaal Williams "chose to withdraw from school" and that audience members would have to ask the star running back why, because BYU won't divulge it.

"Our response is that we are doing everything we can to encourage him to come back and play for us," Holmoe said. "We feel that is something he certainly wants to do. I fully expect that Jamaal will be back with us at some point in time."

• The athletic director said that the contract BYU signed with Notre Dame to play four games in South Bend, Ind., and two games in Provo will likely be bought out by the Irish. BYU has played twice at Notre Dame, but the visits have not been returned.

"We are in discussions right now to see what their choice is going to be," Holmoe said. "We will have a solution soon."

• Holmoe said BYU hasn't made a bid to be an NCAA Basketball Tournament host because the Provo area doesn't have enough full-service hotels to meet the NCAA's requirement.

"If we ever meet that requirement, we will bid for it," he said, adding that some new hotels are coming to Utah Valley in the near future.

Twitter: @drewjay —

Highlights

• BYU AD Tom Holmoe confirmed that BYU and Utah have agreed in principle to extend their football series through 2020 once it starts up again in 2016 and are working on 2021 and 2022 games.

• He expects star running back Jamaal Williams, who withdrew from school last month, to return for his senior season in 2016.

• He is not ruling out a return to the Mountain West Conference, saying he would "never say never about anything like that." —

More online

O For more from Holmoe's address Wednesday, go to Jay Drew's BYU sports blog. > sltrib.com/Blogs/ BYUSports