Shurtleff
SALT LAKE CITY (Legal Newsline) - Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is reportedly seeking to become University of Utah's next president.
Shurtleff has notified the university of his interest in the position, a spokesman for the attorney general told the Salt Lake Tribune Monday.
Utah's former president, Michael K. Young, left to become University of Washington's president in April. Soon after, a search committee was formed to find a successor.
In addition to Shurtleff, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon says he also is interested in the president's job.
Corroon told a Salt Lake City television station Tuesday that the school's headhunters contacted him about the position.
Shurtleff, a Republican, revealed in a YouTube video last December that doctors found a malignant tumor in his appendix. He started chemotherapy treatments a month later.
During his tenure, Shurtleff has come out against college football's Bowl Championship Series.
In April, he announced plans to file a lawsuit in federal court against the BCS, alleging it incurred serious antitrust violations.
Shurtleff said teams from lesser-known conferences, like the Mountain West Conference, do not get an automatic bid into a BCS bowl, placing them at a competitive and a financial disadvantage. The University of Utah used to play in the Mountain West but is now a member of the Pac-12, a conference that does get an automatic bid.
The attorney general also has railed against Bank of America Corp., one of the five mortgage servicers that are part of an ongoing nationwide settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general. In May, he accused a unit of the bank of illegally processing foreclosures in Utah.
From Legal Newsline: Reach Jessica Karmasek by email at jessica@legalnewsline.com.