These are not good times for the Pac-12 Conference. The media rights deal hasn’t been finalized, a sign that the conference doesn’t have a price point it had hoped for. The NCAA Tournaments were a bust in both men’s and women’s basketball. The conference still didn’t make the College Football Playoff last year. USC and UCLA are on their way out one year from now.
Add this latest Larry Scott story to the list, as reported by Jon Wilner of the Wilner Hotline:
“Former Pac-12 executives Mark Shuken and Brent Willman have filed a wrongful termination complaint against the conference following their dismissals for their roles in the Comcast overpayment scandal.
“Shuken, the former president of the Pac-12 Networks, and Willman, the Pac-12’s former CFO, were terminated on Jan. 20 for failing to properly report millions of dollars in overpayments made by Comcast to the Pac-12 Networks.
“But the complaint alleges they did, in fact, properly report the issue — they repeatedly told then-commissioner Larry Scott about the situation after it was discovered in December 2017, and Scott told them ‘not to say or do anything.’”
“The overpayments continued for years and are believed to have totaled $5 million annually over the course of a decade, before Comcast discovered them in 2022. They have left the Pac-12 schools at significant financial risk, with Comcast expected to withhold approximately $50 million in revenue distributions to the networks — or $4.2 million per school — until the expiration of its contract in the summer of 2024.”
George Kliavkoff is trying to clean up this mess. One wonders how much of a residual effect these problems have had on Kliavkoff as he tries to strike a deal which works for the conference.
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