The Pac-12 Conference is two weeks from its media day gathering in Las Vegas. If you follow college sports with a reasonable degree of regularity — not obsessively, but enough to know what is generally happening in the industry — you know that the Pac-12 and commissioner George Kliavkoff are expected to have their long-awaited media rights deal finalized by then.
The industry expectation is that Kliavkoff will use his public remarks at media day to break a very long silence on this and related stories. He has wanted to keep a very low profile and focus on hammering out this agreement. Kliavkoff has understandably felt it is important to keep his head down and tend to the other pieces of very urgent business he has with the Pac-12 CEO Group and the member schools in the conference. Securing contractual agreements, making sure everyone is happy, and creating a pathway to future stability — all while cleaning up more messes left behind by Larry Scott — have necessarily occupied his time.
On July 21, though, it’s go time. Kliavkoff needs to have a deal in hand that he proclaims to the world as a guarantee of conference survival and stability.
All eyes are on San Diego State, too. The Aztecs might seem to be staying in the Mountain West, but the politics of that situation remain clouded and uncertain. Does the Pac-12 want to announce that it has invited SDSU and SMU, or will it wait a year? What else will Kliavkoff reveal about what has happened behind the scenes? That, as much as the media deal itself, will be an enormous point of interest.
[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=696092289]