Larry Scott to step down as Pac-12 Commissioner
Our long regional nightmare is over.
It’s a joyous day for everyone in this world. We can finally say goodbye to a tyrant and begin the healing process.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott will be moving on this summer.
Scott has been the Pac-12 Commissioner since 2009, so he will have served exactly 12 years at the time of his departure this June.
The Pac-12 has confirmed this decision:
The Pac-12 Conference announced today that following ongoing discussions between its governing executive committee, its presidents and Commissioner Larry Scott, it was mutually agreed that the Commissioner would not seek a new contract. The decision was made well in advance of next year’s contract expiration, in part, to allow a new commissioner to be in place to negotiate and maximize the Conference’s next important long-term media rights agreement.
The Conference and Scott decided it was time for new leadership after his 11-year tenure. Scott’s existing contract is scheduled to expire in June 2022 and it was agreed he will remain in the role until June 30, 2021 to assist in the transition.
The Pac-12 executive committee, including University of Oregon President Michael Schill as chair; Kirk H. Schulz, Washington State University president; and Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, will immediately commence a national search for Scott’s replacement as commissioner.
Scott’s start with the Pac-12 seemed to be a sign of good things to come for the Conference of Champions, with the expansion of Utah and Colorado to expand the conference footprint. Following that up was the creation of the Pac-12 Network, the first major independent college conference network that was supposed to set up the conference for the 21st century.
But reality soon hit hard. A failed bid at a Pac-16 in hopes of landing Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech fell apart. The Pac-12 Network could not land a deal with DirecTV, the nation’s largest sports TV carrier, greatly reducing the ability for the conference to monetize the network and make it a national player while the SEC and Big Ten Network thrived. Although the Pac-12 did enjoy more nationally televised contests, they were usually stuck in the late night conference window, leading to lower ratings, exposure, and ad revenue for the conference compared to its counterparts.
The original 12-year TV deal that seemed like a boon at the time soon became a trap as sports TV rights became the major profit center mid-decade, leading to the SEC, Big 12, ACC and Big Ten all doubling or tripling their revenue margins beyond the current Pac-12 deal. The Pac-12 Network soon became rumored in stories of deals to try and make money in lieu of sagging advertisement rights, all while housing its media headquarters in one of the most expensive markets on the planet in downtown San Francisco.
Scott isn’t alone to blame. Even with all the cracks forming, the Pac-12 university presidents still chose to extend Scott in 2017, making him the highest paid commissioner in college sports by quite a mile. Scott made $5.4 million a year in pre-pandemic times, and earned over $40 million during his time as Pac-12 commissioner. This would not have happened without the compliance of Pac-12 university presidents who signed onto Scott’s success.
The result has been irrelevance and disrepair. In the seven years since the inception of the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has sent two teams to the playoff (Oregon 2015 and Washington 2017) and has not made an appearance in nearly half-a-decade. The Pac-12 Networks furloughed and laid off a majority of its staff during this pandemic, and is still working with a skeleton crew to limp through the Pac-12 basketball season—all while handing conference executives major bonuses.
More importantly, due to the Network’s struggles, conference revenues have been dropping in a time when college sports is generally experiencing major success across the board due to its lucrative TV contracts. A lot of Pac-12 schools have discussed athletic cuts to offset expenditures that were dependent on Pac-12 TV revenue that has lagged expectations.
With a Pac-12 TV deal looming in 2024, the conference is in major need of reformation quickly. Major questions arise for the new commissioner, like how to save the Pac-12 Network, what to do with its next television deal, how to help struggling teams with their athletic revenue woes, and how to make the conference respected again on the national landscape.
Many obstacles lie ahead, but so do many opportunities.
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The next Commissioner needs to be essentially 2 things; much more aware of the realities of the campuses, and much more nimble.
It is revisionist history, or recentcy, by those who haven't been around since the bad old days, to not realize just how much of an improvement the media deal was over the piecemeal debacle that existed previously, both in term of $s and distribution. But Scott's deal was too long without opportunity to revisit, and a lack of performance criteria, which allowed it to be leap-frogged $ wise, and quickly became obsolete. The next deals need to not just be better, they need to be structured to be nimble as the media landscape and technology rapidly change.
The Pac-12 Network has been a colossal disappointment, but not because it was a bad idea. It was over-sized (7 channels when 2 with a game day 3rd alternate would have been sufficient), and once again, inexperience in media contracts produced problems. Inexperience resulted in a bad Comcast deal (which is the only kind there is) that was an early cash grab that subsequently handcuffed all future distribution negotiations, and ensured it wouldn't get on the largest single distributor in the country.
Not understanding that streaming is a supplement to broadcast distribution, not a substitute for it, compounded the distribution problem.
But it exists, and provides something that if properly distributed can become a successful distribution tool. Most people also have no clue how much infrastructure improvement was made on the conference campuses as a result of the network. Like so many aspects of the conference, Scott took over a relic of the dark ages.
The next commissioner needs to move beyond trying to be a shrewder negotiator than Scott really was to become a cooperation facilitator that will arm the conference with the exposure necessary to solve the lack of competitiveness.
The expansion of the conference should be seen as a significant accomplishment, but gets too little notice, or appreciation.
On the other side of things, something that gets too much notice is how badly butchered up the conference's officiating is in several sports, most notably (but certainly not exclusively) football. It was bad when Scott arrived, and hasn't been able to get out of its own way since.