It’s game, set, match for Scott with the Pac-12
Larry Scott announced Wednesday he would be departing as Pac-12 commissioner later this year. It was inevitable, wasn’t it?
Naturally, he’ll have to take down the wall art he accumulated in his 11 years as commish, the portraits and water colors of a reign that was threatening to cross over from controversial to toxic.
We’ll help.
Here’s the photo of Scott, schmoozing with DirecTV moguls back in 2012, the year the Pac-12 Networks debuted.
Over here is the nook for the officiating fiascoes. Here’s the portrait of supervisor of basketball officials Ed Rush, lecturing his guys and putting out a “bounty” for anybody who had the stones to issue a technical to Arizona’s Sean Miller. And next to it, a rendering of Woodie Dixon, the Pac-12 administrator who somehow insinuated himself into football replay booths and influenced the process.
Here’s a nice shot of the China initiative Scott implemented – whoops, actually, that’s the three UCLA players busted for shoplifting on the 2017 junket to the Far East.
And over here, well, it’s a glimpse of Pac-12 headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Pricey, but hey, if you’re going to run with the big dogs, you need to start with the glitziest crib.
This isn’t to suggest Scott’s run as Tom Hansen’s successor was without its victories. He engineered the long-term 2011 deals with ESPN and Fox, widely hailed by, among others, me.
He attempted gamely in 2010 to annex four Big 12 schools, including the big kahuna, Texas, but failed – he says narrowly. I suppose that’s a matter of debate; some believe the Longhorns, who always hold most of the aces, were simply playing Scott. Success there might have changed the course of history.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 was a leader in student-athlete health initiatives. So, props there.
Scott came from the Women’s Tennis Assn. as a former Harvard tennis player, and all three of those descriptors appealed to the conference presidents back then. He was out of the box, somebody who could boost revenue and shepherd the league into the 21st century after the staid, traditional leadership of Hansen.
It sounded good, but I don’t think Scott ever grasped the dynamics, and the enormity, of football’s importance – and to a lesser extent, basketball’s – other than something as a tool at the TV bargaining table. He channeled tennis, and his championing of the so-called Olympic sports resonated with the presidents, who have always liked the fact Stanford unfailingly wins the national all-sports standings and UCLA gets to tell the world it’s won more national titles than any other school.
It was that narrative that led Scott to a breathtaking bit of revisionist history in an exit interview with The Athletic. Referencing the creation of the Pac-12 Networks, he told Nicole Auerbach, “At the time, we had 100 percent alignment amongst our presidents, athletic directors and us about our objectives. The Pac-12 Networks was largely about giving opportunity and exposure to our Olympic sports that weren’t getting any. It wasn’t about money or distributing football games, which prior to that, were distributed just on local regional sports networks. But hindsight is awesome.”
That’s going to be big news to Pac-12 athletic directors who believed they could expect a $5-6 million revenue stream not far into the creation of the Networks. It fell far short of that.
But it probably won’t surprise anybody at DirecTV, which still isn’t on board with the Networks, because it realized that the viewing populace isn’t much into watching water polo and field hockey.
Lydia Murphy-Stephans was president of the Pac-12 Networks back in 2013 when I did a piece for my old paper, the Seattle Times, on the impasse between the league and DirecTV. And her words then frame how we should look at the Networks today.
Asked if Pac-12 Networks could be called a success in distribution without DirecTV, Murphy-Stephans said back then, “Unequivocally. Absolutely. We’re entering year two. If we’re entering year seven without DirecTV, I may have a different answer.”
Well, we’re in year nine. And no DirecTV. Whatever was the motivation for implementing the Networks, it can’t be regarded as anything other than a considerable misread of the marketplace.
All the while, Scott was hardly a man of the people, moving league headquarters to one of the costliest neighborhoods in the U.S., downtown San Francisco. He pulled down the biggest salary among college commishes, in excess of $5 million annually. And, according to previous reporting by Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury-News, it was Scott’s style for years to big-time the league’s athletic directors. He knew where the bread was buttered, with the presidents.
Scott has lamented that the deals he struck with Fox and ESPN back in ’11 were too long. Before the contracts play out, the league gets leapfrogged by Power Five competitors. But isn’t nuance like that why they paid him (literally) the big bucks?
Let’s be honest: There are significant challenges for the Pac-12. It’s always going to be three time zones removed from the East. People in the West have a lot more options than painting their faces and grabbing the pom-poms on the way out of the house. That’s built into the conference’s ethos.
Quoted by The Athletic, Scott sounded sort of defeated, saying, “Over the last few years, there really haven’t been those opportunities to grow and transform. It really hasn’t played to my strengths or interest or passions. There wasn’t much for me to do in the area of transformation and growth until our TV rights come up.”
He seemed to be saying he’s tapped out. Time for somebody else to helm this ship.
It’s hard to conclude that’s a bad thing.