RealDawg.com reported yesterday the end of the Pac-12 Conference as we know it. Sure, the conference will exist, but for all intents and purposes is over. And the result can be attributed to the inaction of one man, former Pac-12 commissioner, Larry Scott.
“Scott acted out of self interest, not in the interest of the conference members,” a congenital source has told RealDawg.com.
Texas and Oklahoma had been poking their head around, looking for a way out of the Big XII. Utah and Colorado joined taking the conference up to 12 teams and adding those other two schools seemed inevitable.
“When Larry Scott decided that he didn’t want the Longhorns and Sooners, that’s the day the Pac-12 ended,” the source told RealDawg.com.
The rest is simply a formality and a slow-bleed.
”Pure laziness and self-preservation,” they said. “Texas wields a lot of power and they would have forced Scott to do more than just shuffle papers around on his desk and appear to look busy.”
Brandishing the monicker “The Conference of Champions” from a high-rent district is San Francisco isn’t doing one’s job.
“A lot of what was done (by Larry Scott) was stuff that every other conference was doing,” they said. “A TV network, conference championships—he simply followed suit.”
Scott never acted like he represented some of the finest, cutting-edge academic institutions in the country.
“He didn’t act—he’d react,” the source surmised.
He was never out in front of issues. He lacked vision.
One night at Husky Stadium Scott took questions from Washington beat reporters in the press box. One of the questions that was asked was from KJR’s Dave “Softy” Mahler about the size of the crowd.
Scott that it was a good crowd.
Softy pointed out to a half-full stadium and asked bewilderedly, “that’s a good crowd?”
He just didn’t see nor understand the game of football, the culture of college football, and the importance of the revenue that college football provided to the university’s other athletic programs.
Especially on Montlake.
But he was completely exposed when it came to the Pandemic. He sat on his hands and lied through his teeth about school’s ability to play football.
We’ll call that the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“The reality is that USC has been trying to get out of the conference for 5 years,” the source said.
“The SEC got more buying power with Oklahoma and Texas, the Big 10 did the same with USC and UCLA,” the source said.
There will be more moves in the coming weeks which will be covered in past two.
Scott had a chance of choosing revenue accelerators with the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners but he chose to pass.
And pass the mess onto new commissioner George Kliavkoff. The new commissioner has overseen, though no fault of his own, the loss the 8 highest-revenue schools.
In the end, changes were inevitable given the NIL,TV contracts, College Football Playoffs. However, Washington State, Oregon State, Cal, and Stanford all were severely damaged and it didn’t have to go down like this.
RealDawg.com has more on the timeline for Washington’s and Oregon’s departure from the Pac-12.
