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Sbbruin

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Chad Sexington
Chad Sexington

It can be. We got whackos of every stripe up here, from Utah to California all the way up to Seattle. 

Chewbacca
Chewbacca

This is what makes the most sense, at least for now.  Not sure how this plays out for Oregon or UW, though.  They want to go to B1G, but it sounds like that invite ain't happening just yet.  

DFW Horn
DFW Horn

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://defector.com/the-pac-12-was-doomed-to-fail-and-larry-scott-still-managed-to-disappoint/

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It is a measure of everything that is backward, feckless, and riotously tone-deaf about the Pac-12 Conference that its presidents needed 11 years to realize that their commissioner, Larry Scott, had helped barrel-roll it into national irrelevance with great speed and torque.

Scott was the classic bureaucrat in that he took first care of himself and his fiefdom, but he was also the guy whose mom dropped him off at the two-yard line as an infant and he grew up thinking he only needed to waltz into the end zone to win the game, and ended up fourth-and-goal at the 36. He seemed to succeed at little save keeping the university presidents happy and ultimately failed at that, though in classic corporate fashion they waited until his contract was close to expiring (summer 2022) before “agreeing to part ways.” This is toffee-nosed corp-speak for “We agree that we will stop paying you and for your part, you stop coming around.” The sunk cost of his salary was harder for them to justify eating a year ago, but he still got got all the same.

 

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Scott was responsible for keeping the Pac-12 up with the Joneses of the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences, which was a loser’s play from the start. The B1G and the SEC are legitimate and devotedly amoral money engines in American sport, which is what Scott promised his 12 university presidents when he was hired. He succeeded briefly, getting the first big media contract from ESPN and Fox, a 12-year, $3 billion deal which expires in 2024. The problem with that was that it became obsolete by college money-grubbing standards before the ink dried, and Scott couldn’t chase the money the way those conferences could, and did.

Scott is most damned for creating a conference network the way Jim Delany and Mike Slive did, but asking for too much from programming carriers like DirecTV and regional cable networks, who typically declined to clear space for the Pa-12 Network. Scott was selling what became largely non-revenue sports and decidedly inferior football and basketball products over time as USC and UCLA diminished in national stature, and Oregon didn’t fully replace the multiple voids.

 

Spoiler

Even when the conference wanted to be an industry leader in 2020, said it wasn’t going to play through the pandemic, and even went to the trouble of commissioning a scientific study so convincing that it convinced the Big Ten to follow its lead, the caution was dismissed as soon as the pay envelopes started coming back light. The Big Ten caved within weeks and returned to disease-riddled play, and the Pac-12, noble principles be damned, folded shortly thereafter. They couldn’t even be good hypocrites.

No, this wasn’t Scott’s failure alone. The 12 presidents hired him because they had no firm grasp on how to stay even with the economic engines of the Big Ten and SEC, and he had only the arrogance of previous triumphs as his ally. This was a field of landmines disguised as a glade, and they all waded in wearing clown shoes.

But there was one other thing that dwarfs all the rest of these issues: The Western U.S. is far less invested in college sports, so the Pac-12 had less to bring in terms of captive audiences. A far greater percentage of people in the Pac-12 coverage area have other teams to follow or other things to do, and can ignore Saturday’s big game because there’s a game they care more about on Sunday, or in some agnostic homes, no game at all. The SEC and Big Ten (and to a lesser extent, the Big 12 and ACC) are participatory religions; the Pac-12 is a history of the popes you can read in your backyard if the weather’s nice and you don’t get all ambitious about mowing the lawn instead.

The Pac-12 presidents never understood that, pretending to be haughty academics and all, but they knew enough to hire Scott from the world of women’s tennis to make their schools cash cows through technology and media exposure. Scott acted the part of a stereotypical network wheel, moving the offices to San Francisco and commanding a fat salary that always seemed too fat by a factor of three, but failing to deliver sufficiently lucrative football product to justify the trappings of success that weren’t there. His was the big box store full of stuff nobody wanted to buy, the limitless pasture with too few cows.

The conference has high-level Olympic and non-revenue sports galore. What it lacks are people who will pay to watch them. Football and to a lesser extent basketball drives this financial cart-before-the-horse setup, and the sporting culture of the West isn’t the culture of the Midwest and Southeast. The Pac-12’s money-bearing alumni bases don’t have sufficiently deep roots and haven’t for years; hell, the younger alums have in many cases left their place of graduation for gentler cost-of-living environments. The presidents pretended to miss the signals that the SEC and Big Ten were putting out for everyone to see—that universities are football programs, and libraries and labs mean less than than weight rooms and athletic dorms that convincingly claim constant influxes of booster money, and as a result the Pac-12 couldn’t get in on the fifth floor after missing the elevator on the ground.

It wasn’t that the presidents didn’t know that in the economic environment of the early century, their own schools needed football money too. Almost from the start, they recognized that their customer bases weren’t sufficiently rabid to sustain the budding hyperbusiness of college sports. In 2010, less than a year after he had signed on to the new gig, Scott tried to lure Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado from the Big 12 in a grand plan to boost audience share. Only Texas already had its own ignorable network and wasn’t inclined to share their piece of the action with the Pac-12, and Oklahoma wasn’t going without Texas. The plan died before Texas Tech had time to load the car, and in the end only Colorado and Utah from the Mountain West moved west.

And this is where this all took the 5:15 express to hell.

What ruined Scott specifically after that first big expansion dice roll was his own hubris in thinking that he could bluff TV people. Network suits can hear money hit the snow like no others and have spewed enough disprovable nonsense in their day to know when someone else is trying to do the same. In recent times, they have reached the stage where they had to buy cornhole to fill in their programming day, but that wasn’t always the case. They saw clearly that the Pac-12 wasn’t what it was selling itself as, and didn’t have bankable inventory or eyeballs to contribute, so they bought Pac-12 goods in significantly smaller increments and didn’t clear their channel on their cable systems. Oregon was made by Nike and became the conference’s national player, the only school to make the playoffs at all or the national championship game since 2006. All the other schools faded nationally or were never there. Even Stanford, which has enough athletic endowments to be Venezuela, has cut multiple sports, and not just because of the virus. Times are hard out here, and getting harder by the quarterly report.

But the presidents are still there, and likely no wiser for the experience. They tried to be above the money fray and failed. Then they tried to join the fray and failed too. They are now at the stage where they and Larry Scott are going to be the ill-remembered protagonists in a two-hour lecture in a sports media class night class that most students will skip for two-buck beer night at Shabby’s Corner Tavern Of Higher Learning.

Scott’s as-yet-unhired successor is already up to his or her neck in the mess that Scott inherited and then tripled in size. Because his plans failed, and then his bluffs off those plans failed, the Pac-12 is now more than a decade behind its alleged peers. Mike Leach chose Starkville over Pullman, if that helps bring it home.

Oh, well. It sucked while it lasted.

 

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Wayne

Wayne 571

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5 minutes ago, cochamps said:

Buddy of mine says there are rumors of CDC replacing Larry Scott.  Think he is on 247.

 

Seems to more speculation than anything: 

PAT FORDE, THE college football writer deservedly known among Washington State fans as a classless boor, is riding out his career these days with a publication no one under the age of 45 has ever read. Nonetheless, you have to give props where due and the old hack actually fired up a couple of notable insights last night following news of Larry Scott’s June departure as Pac-12 commissioner.

First, Forde noted, the Pac-12 had many problems before Scott arrived in 2009. Under previous commissioner Tom Hansen the conference was a “mom and pop” operation and Scott ushered it into the modern age …. before, of course, imploding matters with a media rights deal that proved laughable, perpetually awful officiating, lavish expenditures, a bungled covid-19 response and on and on.

Second, given Scott’s many missteps and the fact he had no college administrative experience when he arrived in the Conference of Champions from the Women's Tennis Association, Forde believes the conference’s presidents will want to hire a successor from within the college arena. He offered up a number of interesting candidates.

Ohio State AD Gene Smith (Photo: Matthew Emmons, USA TODAY Sports)

One is current Ohio State and former Arizona State AD Gene Smith, whose record and reputation are both outstanding. For Cougar fans, his hiring might cause some stomach pains because there’s little doubt Pat Chun — a Buckeye alum and former long-time staffer — would be high on Ohio State's target list.

Smith is 61 and makes about $1.5 million a year (that's $4 million less than Scott). Capping a career with a big salary boost in a situation where’s there’s nowhere to go but up while reporting to bosses who obviously are Job-like in their patience would be a hell of a deal.

Another name of particular intrigue that Forde floated is Alabama AD Greg Byrne. He’s only 49 and may want to pin a few more Nick Saban national titles on the wall and see how high the blossoming basketball team can climb, but he’s a West Coast guy. He was the AD at Arizona for seven years and worked in the athletic departments of Oregon and Oregon State after graduating from Arizona State. He’s also making around $1.5 million a year.

Forde also tossed out the names of Stanford AD Bernard Muir, Fox Sports exec Mark Silverman, and WCC commissioner Gloria Nevarez. You can read more about them at SI.com.

HERE’S ANOTHER NAME TO THROWinto the mix: current Texas AD Chris Del Conte. He’s got a résumé a mile long — including a master’s degree from Washington State and a stint as WSU’s assistant AD for external operations in the late 1990s — and he too is a West Coast guy.

He’s been Texas’ AD since 2017 and was athletic director at TCU and Rice before that. He also spent six years as an assistant AD at Arizona under Jim Livengood.

His record of achievement at every stop has earned him nationwide accolades. He’s steeped in facilities, fundraising, marketing and broadcast rights. Moreover, he’s known to blend a workmanlike attitude with the polish of a Madison Avenue CEO.

He’s making $2 million a year and is signed through 2027 with pay raises coming. But Texas is a pressure cooker extraordinaire — as illustrated by the fact Steve Sarkisian is now its fourth head football coach since 2013 — and Del Conte is 52. Why put up with 10 years of heartburn in Austin with unreasonably demanding fans when you can be a hero back on the home turf?

THE BOTTOM LINE ON SMITH, Byrne and Del Conte is this: they're all at the blue blood mountain top. They know exactly what it takes to contend at the highest levels in the modern world of college athletics. They're among the "haves," where facilities, media rights and sponsorships are the best of the best.

They, in short, represent exactly what the Pac-12 wishes it could be.

Whether one or more would have interest in being Pac-12 commissioner is anybody's guess. But the profiles they cut are the kind the Pac-12 needs. The hunt for Scott's successor -- of which WSU president Kirk Schulz will be on the forefront as a member of the Pac-12's three-person executive committee -- figures to be one intriguing storyline.

The stakes are incredibly high. Get this hire wrong and the Pac-12's quest to catch up with the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC (conferences that, in a separate race, are trying to gain on the SEC) will be lost if not forever then for a very, very long time. Let the sprint begin

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5164

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here is the deal with Del and some of those other names

they keep tossing out the $4 million that shitty larry was making, but he was making that because he was the conference commissioner AND the he was the "head of the network"

this says larry made $5.2

https://973thegame.iheart.com/content/2019-05-27-secs-greg-sankey-lowest-paid-commissioner-among-power-5-conferences/

but either way that "head of the network" title is going to me going in the shit can sooner than later because the PAC 12 is going to have to ditch that and the associated jobs and the new commissioner is probably going to be the one to shit can a lot of those jobs

right now sankey makes $2 million so the same as Del, old man slowford makes $3.9 and has been there forever so the PAC 12 is not going to bust out 2X what the SEC SEC SEC is paying and more than the ACC when they are making less money, bleeding conference expense cash and have no idea what their new TV deal will be

plus you say that Texas is a pressure cooker well what is dealing with 12 ADs and 12 university presidents in a conference that clearly has major issues and looks like some of their teams are going in massively different directions and that all but a couple have some pretty serious cash and debt issues

plus does Del really want to go into TV negotiations especially when he had shit going pretty well at Texas and he has the support of the administration

if the PAC 12 was smart would hire DeLoss short term for the negotiations he is the one that knows how to rip the head off of networks and fuck them for major cash then hire a caretaker commissioner after that

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49144

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Most of these AD's mentioned, including CDC, will not be good solutions to replace Larry Scott.

Fundraising, and running a conference are completely different jobs.  Seems like a stronger executive type indivdual who has a background in negotiating TV contracts, and can maneuver through the difficult west coast politics is the direction the PAC12 needs to go. 

 

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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On 3/2/2021 at 9:04 AM, Upgrayedd said:

JFC.  Back-to-back late November roadies to the PNW.  Will probably be night games to boot.

I just booked a hotel for me and the boy for the 10/16 UW game.  He's looking at UW for college, as he wants to pursue BioMedEng and they have a good school for that.  Also looking at UT.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54208

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3 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

I just booked a hotel for me and the boy for the 10/16 UW game.  He's looking at UW for college, as he wants to pursue BioMedEng and they have a good school for that.  Also looking at UT.

Hard as hell for an out-of-state kid to get into UW.  UCSD has a better BME program anyways.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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1 hour ago, Beau Vine said:

Hard as hell for an out-of-state kid to get into UW.  UCSD has a better BME program anyways.

UCSD is brutally hard to get into.  He's a 4.2 student and 1420 on his PSAT and I don't think that gets him in.  He would LOVE UCSD.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54208

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The Pac-12 Networks endured furloughs, layoffs and a fall without football. But the other side of the pandemic carries a grim reality, as well.

The conference’s wholly-owned media enterprise continues to bleed subscribers, undercutting revenue and ramping up the pressure to make drastic structural changes during the three-and-a-half years of the remaining contract cycle.

So stark is the outlook that sources within the conference and the sports media industry believe the Pac-12 should consider shuttering the six regional networks — and possibly the entire operation — as the business model loses leverage in the evolving post-pandemic media world.

“The conference needs to rethink everything it does,’’ an industry source explained. “Its position has weakened in the last two years. The whole notion of the Pac-12 Networks has to go.”

That weakness is clear in the latest subscriber data:

The Pac-12 Network (the national network) now has just 14.8 million subscribers, according to Dec. ’20 estimates provided to the Hotline by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

That figure represents a drop of 17 percent over the past two years, based on S&P data: In Feb. ’19, the national network had 17.9 million subscribers. (At its peak five years ago, it had more than 19 million.)

In comparison, the Big Ten and SEC networks are believed to have more than 50 million subscribers.

The Pursuit Channel reportedly has 35 million.


“People can’t watch us on our own networks,’’ a Pac-12 source said. “That hurts. We have to get our credibility back in football, and to do that, people need to be able to see us play.”

The Pac-12 regional networks, which are often carried on a sports tier by systems within the conference footprint, have a combined 8.5 million subscribers.

According to S&P, the sub figures for all seven networks are as follows (December estimates):

Pac-12/National: 14.8 million
Pac-12/Los Angeles: 3.0 million
Pac-12/Bay Area: 2.1 million
Pac-12/Washington: 1.1 million
Pac-12/Mountain: 1.0 million
Pac-12/Arizona: 0.7 million
Pac-12/Oregon: 0.6 million

And the subscriber fee is what you might expect — low.

The Pac-12 Network, which is available on a basic tier on many cable systems within the conference footprint and a sports tier outside the footprint, produces an average of just 13 cents per subscriber per month, according to S&P.

The regional networks charge a higher fee to their limited audiences:

Pac-12/Washington: 98 cents (sub/month)
Pac-12/Arizona: 91 cents
Pac-12/Bay Area: 80 cents
Pac-12/Los Angeles: 73 cents
Pac-12/Mountain: 53 cents
Pac-12/Oregon: 52 cents
Pac-12/National: 13 cents

In contrast, the Big Ten and SEC networks reportedly charge in excess of 50 cents per subscriber.

The Hotline reached out to a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the sports media landscape and the Pac-12’s business model. Each declined to speak for attribution, but the consensus was clear:

The Pac-12 must do something drastic. It cannot hope to remain competitive within the Power Five while its peers generate more revenue and larger audiences, year after year.

At the same time, the conference has no easy escape hatch because of the nature of its contracts.

The Pac-12 Networks are obligated to produce 850 live events annually for Comcast, DISH and other distribution partners through the 2023-24 sports year. Shutting down the regional networks would likely result in reduced revenue, but it likely would cut expenses, too.

At the very least, sources said, it would become leaner and more efficient — and perhaps more enticing to potential partners.

In the 2019 fiscal year (the most recent available), the Pac-12 Networks reported $123 million in revenue and $90 million in expenses, with an average of $2.8 million sent to each campus.

It’s not known what percentage of the operating expenses are tied to the six regional networks; the Pac-12 financial reports don’t break down line-item costs in that manner.

But one thing is clear: The campus distribution figure is lower than even the lowest initial estimates.

During a gathering of conference executives before the networks were launched in Aug. ’12, commissioner Larry Scott thrilled the athletic directors with projections for annual distributions once the enterprise had exited the start-up phase.

According to a source in attendance at the meeting, those estimates were:

High end: $7 million-to-$10 million per school per year
Middle: $5 million-to-$7 million per school per year
Low end: $3 million-to-$5 million per school per year

Based on Hotline research and financial data provided by the conference, the networks have not yet distributed even $3 million to the campuses:

2013: None listed
2014: $862,000 per school
2015: $1,677,500 per school
2016: $1,980,250 per school
2017: $2,522,167 per school
2018: $2,666,667 per school
2019: $2,789,583 per school
2020: Not yet available

(Scott’s annual salary of more than $5 million is based, in part, on his role as the chief executive of the Pac-12’s media company.)

Where does that leave the networks, which have severely underperformed expectations in the areas of revenue and reach and are contractually bound to the status quo until the summer of 2024?

Multiple industry experts believe the conference should consider every option, including:

— Fold the Pac-12 regional networks, leaving only the national feed and creating a revised model that resembles the Big Ten and SEC networks.

— Shutter the Pac-12 Networks entirely, including the national network, and sell the content, which includes about 35 football games, to a major media company or perhaps a streaming service (for example: DAZN).

— Attempt to negotiate a new Tier 1 media deal immediately.

The third option would be the most lucrative but is also the trickiest to accomplish.

The Tier 1 agreements with ESPN and Fox expire in the summer of 2024 — the same end-point as the Pac-12 Networks distribution agreements with Comcast, DISH and others.

But 40 months is a long time to wait for a conference that already lags many of its peers by tens of millions of dollars annually in media rights revenue.

Industry experts and conference sources believe the Pac-12 cannot sit back as the resource gap expands.

In their view, Scott’s successor, who’s expected to be in place this summer, should immediately begin conversations with current media partners and scour the marketplace to assess the demand for Pac-12 content.

Whether ESPN and Fox would be willing to rip up the current deals is not known. But one source, who has spent a lifetime in the sports-media space, offered the following assessment: “It’s all solvable.”

An expedited Tier 1 negotiation could allow the Pac-12’s next contract cycle to begin in 2023, providing the athletic departments with needed cash 12 months ahead of schedule.

“They need to go early because the situation is getting worse,’’ a source said.

Here’s how:

ESPN, the most influential media entity in college sports, has lost approximately 10 million subscribers in the past five years, limiting its ability to purchase the broadcast rights to the top professional and collegiate sports leagues.

At the same time, it reportedly agreed to spend $300 million annually to broadcast the SEC’s ‘Game of the Week’ package. Add its ownership of the SEC Network, and the media giant’s plan is clear.

“In a diminishing ESPN economy,” a source said, “they are allocating a greater percentage of dollars to the SEC.”

Equally concerning to the Pac-12 is the timing of upcoming negotiations:

The Big Ten’s contracts expire in the summer of 2023, giving it access to ESPN and Fox dollars before the Pac-12.

How much cash, and how many premium broadcast windows, will remain after the heavyweights have fed at the trough?

“The Pac-12’s at a critical point,” a source said. “There’s only so much money to go around. It might be best to move to the front of the line.”

According to Scott’s strategy, the dollars available in traditional buckets might not matter. He believes an ever-expanding marketplace will include not only the traditional players like ESPN and Fox but also Amazon and Apple, which have unlimited cash.

RELATED ARTICLES
Perception of the Pac-12 Networks is bad; reality is worse
Sept. 11, 2021: Judgment day for the Pac-12 vs. Ohio State, Michigan
Washington State’s naming rights deal: What it means for the Cougars and says to the Pac-12
Pac-12 media revenue: Even future payouts won’t hit current SEC level
Hotline analysis: Cal athletics turned a profit in FY20 thanks to a massive assist from central campus
However, there are no guarantees that the tech giants will have the desire to bid on Pac-12 rights or the ability to distribute to a mass audience on an accessible platform.

It’s not only about the dollars.

“The athletic directors want exposure,” a source said. “They want people to see Pac-12 football. Do Amazon subscribers even watch football?”

The end result, sources said, is a conference that could be left with an unseemly choice:

Big dollars on a distribution island with the tech giants, or smaller dollars and limited broadcast windows with the traditional sports networks.

Either way, the timing is crucial.

“We need to go to the marketplace this fall,” a source said. “I don’t think we can wait.”

The Comcast and DISH deals are what are really fucking them.  They need to break those contracts, hope they don't get sued because it won't actually harm DISH and Comcast, and go full streaming.  

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