By now, it’s been firmly established that Pac-12 commissioner, Larry Scott is a let-them-eat-cake kind of fellow, the time is right to really consider what this man has done to the Pacific-12 conference.
The background on Scott is that he’s a tennis guy, a Harvard grad, and a good fundraiser and innovator…for tennis. And while that sport is a very vibrant NCAA sport, the real cash cow for the Pac-12 is football.
And he has failed miserably where football is concerned.
Right now Pac-12 football is on the shelf until Scott and his pals in San Francisco make a final decision on Thursday — a decision they were supposed to have made last Friday, but no…we’ll have none of that.
The West Coast is still living in fear and panic over COVID, and as such, football remains canceled until further notice.
The goal, according to most reports, is to re-open the football season by the end of October. Sounds like a deal — let’s do it.
And once they resume play, Larry Scott needs to take that ridiculous contract for “Pac-12 After Dark” and tear the thing in half.
Get rid of it and never re-visit that feckless, disastrous, hair-brained idea ever again. And if he can’t redeem his conference once and for all from this massive mistake in judgement? Then this guy needs to go — period.
“It’s clear that for certain fans, that’s a real irritation and it’s a concern for our athletic departments because we do get a significant amount of negative feedback about the start times,” Scott told The Oregonian back in early 2019
Gee, Lare…why do you think it’s an irritation? Perhaps the “negative feedback” stems from the fact that Pac-12 football is the after-thought on a busy Saturday of big-time college football.
Every game should be played during the day no later than 6 pm kick off. How else can this conference go head-to-head with the SEC, ACC, and Big 10? Not to mention the Big 12.
These are the “Power Five” conferences, but ESPN and Fox Sports sold Scott on the idea of “keeping the party going” — when in reality the party ended hours ago and now everyone has gone home and gone to bed.
When it’s 8 pm on the West Coast, it’s 11 pm on the East Coast and 10 pm Central Time.
This has been an irritant to Pac-12 fans since its onset, and the Pac-12 has lost a lot of credibility. Couple that with the fact that they’re not even playing right now, and it’s truly an embarrassment and a victim of horrible management.
Scott is in charge of marketing a product: The Pac-12, the “Conference of Champions”, but you don’t take a product and put it on a shelf to sell on Friday night at 8 pm Pacific Standard Time.
It won’t sell (unless it’s booze).
What’s next from the marketing genius of Larry Scott? Playing the Rose Bowl at 8 pm so “more people can see it”? After all, it’s a great idea! The fans all hate it, but Larry likes it!
Plus, there’s the issue of a team playing an 8 pm game in the desert and having to come back home Sunday morning only to face a game on Friday night.
But exposure is the biggest issue — and if you have a good product, you don’t hide it.
It’s going to be dark in the winter months anyway after 4 pm — you don’t have to wait until 7 or 8 pm to get ‘after dark”.
As it is, most of the people tuning in to watch the Pac-12 After Dark are the schools own fans, and recruits in other time zones (or even local) who set their DVR to record while they went out and had fun on a Saturday night.
Just knock it off Larry.
Go head to head, and let the chips fall where they may. The Pac-12 has been the fifth string while the SEC, Big 12, ACC and Big 10 have been the starters — enough is enough.
Who hired this guy anyway? I am well aware of the CEO’s of the Pac-12, but perhaps a new organizational chart needs to include former football guys who know what will work to actually get this conference back into the national dialogue.
Names such as Rick Neuheisel, Mike Bellotti, Chris Petersen, Barry Alverez. A four-person panel that would provide valuable input on a quarterly basis. These are football coaches who are well-aware of how to market a college football team.
Just a thought…
Who wouldn’t want football minds overseeing football problems? Even Tom Hansen “got it” to a certain extent. During the 25 years he was running the show in San Francisco the Pac-10 was still a nationally recognized conference where football was concerned. Those were the years when USC won consecutive national titles, Washington won a national title, and Oregon began to make a rise.
Hansen was there when the Pac-8 became the Pac-10 by bringing in the Arizona schools.
Scott split the conference in half by bringing in Colorado and Utah, and then hid this conference from viewers who don’t want to stay up until 12 am watching college football on Saturday nights.
It was hard enough for my pastor dad to give a quick benediction on Sundays in order to get home to watch the noon kickoff of the NFL, but After Dark on a Saturday night would have been real tough for a man who had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the church on Sunday morning…
