Editors’ note: This article was originally published by USA TODAY Sports and has been republished in its entirety below.
Shortly after the ACC announced that Northwestern athletics director Jim Phillips would be its next commissioner, a veteran administrator in the league expressed a sense of relief.
A few of the candidates who had been mentioned publicly for the job came from outside college sports, specifically from the television or digital world, which could be considered a major asset in an environment where conferences rise and fall on how much money they can generate from their media rights contracts.
But this administrator, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because they were not directly involved in the hiring process, thought it was smart that the ACC opted for Phillips, who has spent his entire career on college campuses and understands the vast challenges facing college sports at this particular moment and the needs of athletes, coaches and administrators on the local level.
That conversation became newly relevant this week when Larry Scott and the Pac-12 announced a separation, marking the third Power Five commissioner job to turn over within the last 13 months. More on that in a second.
First, let’s rewind to 2009 when the then-Pac-10 hired Scott, who had never worked in college sports. Coming from the tennis world, where he spearheaded significant growth in the WTA’s sponsorship, prize money and exposure, he was the odd duck in the room with other commissioners who represented the old guard of college sports.
For awhile, Scott seemed fresh and innovative, poised to invigorate a conference that had fallen behind its peers in pretty much every metric. Within his first year on the job, Scott pursued conference expansion and nearly pulled off a landscape-changing move for Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Colorado. Instead, he settled for Colorado and Utah, signed a market-setting television deal with ESPN and Fox and created the Pac-12 Networks.
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There are many reasons why Scott’s tenure eventually unraveled over the last few years, starting with the Pac-12 Networks’ poor distribution on major cable systems and a lack of revenue from it that eventually shuffled the Pac-12 to the bottom of the power conferences financially.
But on a more visceral level, Scott simply ran out of goodwill. Over the years, the complaints about his relationships — or lack thereof — with athletics directors in the Pac-12 were almost too numerous to count. There was no sense of partnership, of being a colleague. They didn’t feel he was truly engaged with their issues, their concerns.
From the campus level, they saw a conference that was spending massive amounts of money on Scott’s salary, on moving the league headquarters from an office park east of Oakland to downtown San Francisco, on lavish travel arrangements all while delivering disappointing revenue growth.
A commissioner with Scott’s profile was supposed to be the future of college sports. Instead, it’s the past. Judging by what Washington State president Kirk Schulz told the Oregonian on Thursday, it’s a safe bet that understanding and managing those relationships on campus will be a crucial quality for the next Pac-12 commissioner.
“You’ve got 12 schools, they’re like 12 children. You have to love ‘em all different,” he said. “I want the commissioner to show up at Pullman (and other schools) and say, ‘What can I do to help you succeed?’ ”
When Scott’s replacement gets hired, it will mark a fairly significant transition-of-power moment. The last 25 years have seen a steady erosion of the NCAA’s influence in the overall direction of college sports and an increasing power grab by conference commissioners, particularly those who run the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12.
As tends to happen, though, the generation of leadership that made college sports what it is today has receded into the background. Only Bob Bowlsby of the Big 12 remains from the group that established the College Football Playoff in 2013, and there won’t be any commissioners left from the last major conference realignment in 2010-11.
That’s a lot of change in a very short period of time, and these new decision-makers will not exactly get to ease into their jobs. In fact, the vast expectation is that the entire enterprise could look different at the end of 2021 than it did at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The most immediately significant issue, of course, is how these leagues will manage whatever new rules emerge from legislation in Congress dealing with name, image and likeness and a Supreme Court case later this year on whether schools can limit benefits to athletes related to education.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There’s the College Football Playoff and growing dissatisfaction with the four-team format. In 2023, the Big Ten’s television contract will be up, with the Pac-12, SEC and Big 12 coming up for negotiation shortly after that. The modern history of college sports suggests such a glut in media rights deals leads to realignment, though there’s an added wild card this time of traditional cable declining and digital growing.
For every conference, creating new revenue once the pandemic ends to make up for a disastrous 2020 will be a top priority. And on everything from the transfer portal to frustrations with the NCAA enforcement process, conference commissioners will have to manage a fractious and uneasy membership.
Perhaps that’s why, at least on the campus level, the allure of a big-time television executive or someone coming from pro sports seems less appealing in the commissioner’s chair these days. These are nervous times in college sports with lots of change on the horizon. As the currents of history pull away from the amateur model, having commissioners who understand higher education and campus culture is more valued than ever.
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