You’re very close.
Hatch actually began complaining in 2003, holding hearings on the subject in October, but that would’ve had nothing to do with Utah beating Pittsburgh. What made the drums pound a little louder was after that game, Utah state AG Mark Shurtleff begin threatening lawsuits, and since the contract was due for renegotiation, they threw him a bone that made it easier for non-BCS conferences to enjoy the money from BCS bowls, which is how we got stuck with Hawaii playing Georgia in 2007, for example.
Then when Utah went undefeated again in 2008 and end of the year at number two, Shurtleff and Hatch began pounding the drums louder than the Houston Astros spy was pounding the trashcan. The problem for them was that Shurtleff really couldn’t figure out exactly what his case was or whom he was going to sue. They were whining about “exclusion from the national championship game,” but the rules did not exclude them from participating in that game.
So you are correct in general just with a little bit of missing detail.
