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We interrupt our regularly scheduled Pac-12 basketball power rankings to weigh in on the search for a new conference commissioner. Last Week, Larry Scott agreed to step away from the job after 11 years.
While that was five years too long, the Pac-12 has to look ahead when picking a replacement. Forward-thinking is the way to go, but learning from the Scott era debacle is a close second. As it stands, this conference is rapidly becoming the Power-5’s forgotten child.
Why Pac-12 athletics became so irrelevant in recent years falls squarely on Scott’s mismanagement. When the Pac-12 made big mistakes was when they made the news. Items such as administrators over-ruling replay officials and the 2020, on, then off, then on (under political pressure) half-baked six-game (ish) football season made the conference a joke.
The more missteps that piled up, the weaker their on-field, on-court product became. Worse, it spiraled. Poor management led to diluted teams, which magnified even more errors, and so on. Why would a top recruit from any big money sport want to play for a school in a conference where they get minimal exposure and are as irrelevant to the national picture as a team from the Ohio Valley conference?
Again, the goal is to move forward, not get mired in the past. Those expecting things to change overnight are chasing a fantasy. First of all, Scott has his job until June. A quality search will take time, and someone has to be in charge. But six months?
Once a successor is hired, it will take a few more months to get acclimated to the position before meaningful changes can begin. It will take years before results show on the field, polls, or wallets.
When searching for a new commissioner, the Conference CEO group needs to have their priorities in order so whoever is hired can hit the ground running. These are some of the items which need to be addressed almost immediately because the Pac-12 falls further behind by the day.
First and foremost comes acknowledging that the next commissioner will run a business worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Big-time college sports such as football and basketball bring in revenues to the Pac-12 that are more than the GDP of over half the world’s countries.
As much as academic types, small sports athletes, and snobs don’t like it, this is the, for lack of a better term, the playing field Power-5 athletics plays on. Big sports are the cash cow that funds so many other initiatives on campus.
The pandemic should have brought that point home loud and clear. Without SEC-like television revenue and no fans in attendance at football games, look how many jobs, sports, and scholarships got the ax in recent months.
One of the justifications for Scott’s over-inflated salary was that he not only ran conference sports, but he was also the CEO of a television network. Too bad he couldn’t market the conference to sports fans the way he marketed himself to university administrations.
Turning this monster of a problem won’t happen overnight. If fixing the deep dark money pit known as the Pac-12 Network were easy, it would have been done by now. However, there are models the Pac-12 can follow to make the conference much more profitable.
The SEC didn’t get to the point where it could negotiate a concurrent $3B television contract by accident, luck, or fate. The Big Ten and ACC are learning from their example. So should the Pac-12.
Mission number one is to get Pac-12 marquee matchups as much television exposure in prime slots as possible. The product becomes appealing to recruits they can see conference teams play. That, in turn, improves teams and makes them more desirable. It’s a better plan than hoping USC or Oregon can hobble together a Top-5 team every four to six years.
I’m not advocating giving away television rights, but there is enough opportunity to leverage exposure and maximize revenues. If that means devaluing the Pac-12 Network temporarily, then so be it. Under the current distribution deal, most of the country can’t watch it anyway.
Now is also the time to stop complaining about eastern bias in the polls. Last August I wrote an article on this very topic. To be a marquee conference, members have to show up in the polls. Last year only four Pac-12 schools voted in the Coaches Poll (that included Kevin Sumlin, who was fired after the season). Meanwhile, the SEC and Big Ten have seven each.
It’s not a bias thing at this point; it’s a participation thing. Additionally, no one is advocating “ballot-stuffing.”If eastern coaches don’t watch West Coast games, as critics point out, then the next Pac-12 commissioner has to mandate at least half the conference schools participate in the Coaches Poll.
Although moving the Pac-12 offices isn’t the highest priority, it’s probably the first thing that should happen. The conference pays a fortune in rent, almost $7M annually, for their upscale San Francisco offices. Yes, prestige counts for something, but as Shrek would say, “Do you think he’s compensating for something?”
If supporters of smaller sports want something to complain about, this is it. Maybe if Stanford had some of the money back from paying 11 years of the Pac-12’s outrageous overhead, they wouldn’t have cut 11 sports programs last summer. Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, or Las Vegas work just as well, if not better than San Francisco, and rent will be much less.
The Big Ten is headquartered in Chicago and has a satellite office in New York City. They pay only $1.5M in rent annually.
The Pac-12 needs to expand. This is a controversial but necessary step. It’s time to add Brigham Young University. It’s as close to landing Notre Dame as the Pac-12 will ever get. The Cougars bring a national (and international) audience with them. Imagine what it would be like if one year the Brigham Young vs. Utah Holy War game was for the Pac-12 South title. They don’t want to play basketball or baseball on Sundays, fine, then schedule them to play on Saturdays instead.
Besides bringing a top-shelf athletic program with them, they could teach the conference something about television distribution. The Pac-12 network has access to about 20 million subscribers. Meanwhile, BYUtv is available to 65 million.
Since an odd number of teams won’t work, the University of Nevada – Las Vegas should be the 14th member. The school’s enrollment numbers are similar to Washington State, Oregon State, Colorado, and Utah. Nevada, like Utah, is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Now is the time to tap into what is sure to be a growing fan base.
Let’s tie this up in a neat bow. The ideal candidate to run the Pac-12 and make the conference relevant again should have the following qualities.
It’s not going to be easy for the new commissioner, but there is still a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.