Hey All,
It's time to talk a bit about the elephant in the room, the two mortal blows that were dealt to the Pac 12 when Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah announced that they would all be playing in the Big XII in 2024 along with the Big Ten then grabbing Oregon and Washington. Those announcements came a little over a year after USC and UCLA bolted for the Big Ten. That leaves Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State stranded among the wreckage of what was the Pac 12. Disclaimer: This is just how I see what happened from the cheap seats. Many others know far more than me.
How did we get here?
Short answer: Larry Scott's incompetence and George Kliavkoff's inexperience killed the league. Now, Larry Scott was allowed to be the jerk he was by the university presidents and athletic directors that hired him. A good number of members of that group had changed by the time that Kliavkoff had been given the job. This later group's failing was a not having a firm grasp of reality when in negatiations with the TV networks.
Long Answer: The demise of the Pac 12 started the day Larry Scott was hired. Let me list three ways he, without any real oversight by the league presidents and ADs, led the league down a path for destruction.
1. Failure in TV contract negotiations and the Pac 12 Network
This failure of these things are joined at the hip. To get a good TV deal that provides great revenue for league members and exposure for the teams requires you have to partner with a network. Tennis Larry sold the league on not doing so. He preached that a league that does not partner with anyone can call the shots for money and viewing slots. He was dead wrong. For your league to succeed, the networks have to have some skin in the game. 61% of the Big Ten Network is owned by Fox. A full 80% of the SEC Network is owned by DISNEY (ESPN/ABC). I think the Big Ten and SEC are doing pretty well with their partnerships right now. The Pac 12 was left with an inferior contract and poor TV time slots because of this. The only reason that the farce known as Pac 12 After Dark exists is because the league had to settle for the leftover time slots from ESPN and Fox. As for the Pac 12 Network, it's an unseen channel because of no network involvement to plug and promote the channel. Heck, the Longhorn network even has DISNEY (ESPN) and Learfiled Sports as co-owners. A prime example of how poorly the Pac 12 Network is regarded by broadcasters is that when AT&T, who the league had a streaming deal with, acquired DirecTV, AT&T declined to carry the channel on DirecTV!
2. Larry Scott loved NFL Parity
Larry and the lesser schools in the Pac 12 loved it when he spoke of league parity. Larry wanted a league where anything could happen on any given weekend. That works for the NFL where 9-8 can get you into the playoffs. However, going 7-5 or 6-6 in pac 12 gets you unranked and a trip to the Sun Bowl. College leagues thrive on a dominant team or teams. Also, dominant teams get your league more bowl money and better players want to play in your league. How many years have you looked at the Pac 12 schedules and just see the losses coming due to brutal scheduling? Remember the years when a team would play back to back road games with the second one coming on a Thursday night? Sigh.
3. Larry Scott loved spending money on himself
Larry, loved wasting the league's cash. Oh, Larry loved going first class. Private Jets, and expensive hotels were his wont. Remember the $7,500 a night Las Vegas hotel suite he would stay in at the Pac 12 Basketball tournament? His salary was about 5 million a year. That was just a little shy of the salaries of the Big Ten, SEC and Big XII commissioners combined! He also moved the Pac 12 headquarters from Walnut Creek to San Francisco. That ended up costing the league at least 11 million dollars in rent alone for Larry's upscale office. The best example of Larry's greed is that he took a $2.5 million dollar bonus then laid off 94 league employees a few months later. Wow.
4. Larry overvalued the Olympic sports
Football carries athletic department budgets. It accounts for 85-90% of the revenue made. Basketball accounts for the other 10-15%. A scant few baseball programs make money and all the other sports run in the red and are paid for by football/basketball dollars. Scott's belief that people would flock to the Pac 12 Network for Olympic sports was flat out nuts. Olympic sports are amazing, but they don't draw large TV numbers. Aside from a couple weeks every two to four years when the average American gets Olympic fever, these sports are largely ignored by viewers.
5. Larry's arrogance was staggering
Scott believed he was always the smartest guy in the room. That attitude crushed any kind of environment where fresh ideas could take the league off Larry's path to destruction.
Now, for George Kilavkoff's role in the demise of the Pac 12
1. Kliavkoff took the job not knowing how bad things really were
I liken this to the mid 1980s when Bobby Collins took over as HC at SMU after Ron Meyer ran to the NFL after leaving the Mustang program on the verge of the Death Penalty from the NCAA. Collins had no idea how bad things were at SMU until he actually started the job. Kliavkoff had no idea how bad things were going for the Pac 12 until he actually showed up to the office.
2. Kliavkoff had a chance to make the Pac 12, the Pac 20
(This one isn't really his fault, he didn't have the necessary gravitas as a new commissioner to make this happen.)
After the Big XII found out that Texas and Oklahoma were leaving for the SEC back a couple of years ago, then Big XII Commissioner Bob Bowlsby contacted Kliavkoff and offered up the idea of a merger of the leftover eight Big XII schools with the Pac 12 to form the Pac 20. A committee was formed to explore the offer. The committee voted it down. Now, according to an article by Ben Bolch in the LA Times, one of the key people who voted the merger down was USC president Carol Folt. Specualtion runs rampant now as to if Folt shot down the deal knowing that SC was ready to leave for to the Big Ten. Whether true or not, the LA Times does love blaming SC for everything.
3. Presidential stupidity leads to a mass exodus
USC and UCLA stunned the college football world when it was announced that they were both leaving for the Big Ten in July of 2022. That put Kliavkoff in scramble mode to put a deal together to save the league. He could not get a deal done with Fox even though the network had an exclusive three month negotiating window with the league. ESPN was still interested in the league to continue to fill those Pac 12 After Dark time slots and offered up a deal that would pay each team $30 million annually. Kilavkoff couldn't sell it to the league. The league's CEO group that consisted of school presidents believed what some media analyst told them and rejected the deal. They then instructed Kliavkoff to ask for $50 million per team. ESPN pretty much laughed Kliavkoff out of the room. Then, the Big XII came in and took a deal with ESPN and Fox that would pay their member schools $31.7 million annually and then would pay that same rate to any schools the league might acquire in the future. That was it. The networks didn't need the Pac 12 anymore. No more contract offers were forthcoming for the Conference of Champions. So, Colorado did their due diligence and left for the Big XII. Kliavkoff was working on a subpar streaming deal for the league when Arizona, Utah and ASU all ran to the Big XII. The six teams left behind would become four quickly. The Big Ten, buoyed by Fox's money came after Oregon and Washington. The Big Ten got them cheap too. They will only get paid a half share until the next media deal is negotiated seven years down the road.
Thoughts on those left behind
Who knows what will happen to Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State? I have an idea or two. I think OSU and Wazzu end up in the Mountain West Conference. It makes the most sense to me regionally and because none of the remaining Power Five conferences want them either. Stanford and Cal are joined at the hip like brothers. Stanford is the older brother who has been forced to take their younger brother everywhere they go by their parents. If they don't go somewhere as a package deal, I'll be surprised. Also, don't forget that Stanford could just drop football altogether. That would also mean that most other sports would be dropped as well. Stanford loves their Director's Cups, but only if other people's money pays for it. Stanford loves their money and sports. They just don't like to see the two mix. If Stanford does drop football, Cal is toast. Cal's athletic department is in so deep in debt, they will never get out of it without a conference pay check. My gut feel is Stanford and Cal do get a deal from another Power Five conference.
Until next time folks, remember that real football will be played this Saturday!
-The Commissioner
