Tag: George Kliavkoff

George Kliavkoff’s biggest mistake as Pac-12 commissioner is beyond dispute

The debate is over: Kliavkoff made one fatal error, now that we know the #Pac12 presidents rejected a conference-saving ESPN deal.

The news on Friday was infuriating and depressing to anyone who cares about the Pac-12 and wanted the conference to survive. The Pac-12 presidents reportedly rejected an ESPN deal which would have paid each member school $30 million per year. That figure would have kept the conference together and alive. The number would have been very competitive with the number the Big 12 eventually arrived at, which was $31.7 million per year.

The Pac-12 getting $30 million per year for every remaining school without USC and UCLA would have been roughly as impressive as the Big 12 fetching $31.7 million per year for every member school with Texas and Oklahoma out the door.

There’s a lot to process here, but we begin with the simple truth that the Pac-12 presidents are more responsible for the destruction of the conference as we knew it (maybe it will survive as the Pac-4 plus some Mountain West members; we will see) than George Kliavkoff is. The deal was there and the presidents shot it down.

However, this doesn’t let Kliavkoff off the hook. In fact, it exposes his biggest and most obvious mistake as Pac-12 commissioner.

It’s actually not that hard to pin down.

Kliavkoff, with that 2022 ESPN deal in hand, needed to tell the Pac-12 presidents, “You must take this deal. It is as good as you can reasonably expect. You wanted me to deliver a media rights deal. This is it, take it or leave it. If you reject it, I will resign my position immediately.”

Leaders need to lead. They sometimes need to speak tough truths and tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. George Kliavkoff was unwilling or unable to tell Pac-12 presidents the truth. He was unable to put his foot down in a moment of great consequence.

Let’s continue to process this story by gathering reactions from across the Pac-12 and the nation, as everyone continues to wonder how Pac-12 presidents could be so shortsighted and out of touch with reality:

REPORT: Dollar figure finally emerges on significant ESPN deal Pac-12 rejected

John Canzano reports the #Pac12 presidents rejected a 2022 ESPN deal for $30M per school, competitive with the #Big12.

Earlier this week, John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported that in 2022, Pac-12 presidents rejected what was termed a significant offer from ESPN for Pac-12 media rights.

Let’s remember that the Big 12 arrived at a deal — sans Texas and Oklahoma (who will leave next year) — for $31.7 million per school. That was a remarkably good price point considering the two huge brands in the conference would no longer be part of the media landscape in the Big 12.

Apparently, the Pac-12 had a competitive media rights price point in 2022, but according to John Canzano, the conference’s presidents turned down an ESPN deal. That deal would have paid out $30 million to each member school per year.

The Pac-12 should have rushed to ESPN’s doors to agree to a $30 million price point, maybe bargaining to see if it could bump it up to 32 or 33, but being happy with 30. Given that USC and UCLA were no longer going to be in the conference, that would have represented a sand save after hitting the fairway drive into the bunker. It wouldn’t have been an amazing deal, but it would have been a competitive deal and given the conference stability.

Let’s process this huge story and what it means on multiple levels:

Pac-12 presidents went into panic mode as George Kliavkoff swung and missed

Details from the final, franctic moments before 5 #Pac12 schools abandoned ship add to the humiliation for this dying conference.

What does panic look and sound like?

It sounds like Pac-12 presidents in the days and hours before five conference schools abandoned ship, leaving behind four schools: Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State.

You have probably heard that University of Arizona President Robert Robbins destroyed Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff in public for his woefully inadequate Apple TV deal.

That wasn’t an indicator of panic. That was an indicator of the dissatisfaction that ran through the members of the Pac-12 CEO Group. The dissatisfaction, however, can be connected to the sense of panic that emerged from one (undisclosed) Pac-12 school president, who expressed the hope that seven Pac-12 schools could be invited to a Power Five conference … but that Oregon State and Washington State would be left behind in the cold.

Solidarity and sticking together … except for those two schools in the Northwest without any power. It’s such a bad look for the Pac-12.

That’s basically what the Pac-12 is all about: making itself look worse, and worse and even worse.

Here’s the reaction to another astonishingly embarrassing part of the Pac-12’s collapse and implosion, and the absolutely nonexistent leadership that brought about this disaster:

University of Arizona president roasts George Kliavkoff over Apple TV deal

Arizona’s president hammered Kliavkoff’s bad deal, but keep in mind: #Pac12 presidents rejected an ESPN deal last year. What a clown car.

We all know the Pac-12 fumbled, bumbled and stumbled in failing to get a media rights deal done.

We know this was a horrible process with a horrible, worst-case outcome, the death of the 108-year-old conference.

We know this was a train wreck.

Yet, each new report and revelation that drips out from a reporter makes it all seem worse. It’s very Pac-12. Everything can always get worse. Everything continues to look worse than it did a day ago or a week ago.

The latest “drip, drip, drip” revelation — Chinese water torture for anyone who loves or cares about the Pac-12 — comes from University of Arizona President Robert Robbins, who dropped a truth bomb on the Apple TV deal presented to the Pac-12 CEO Group by commissioner George Kliavkoff a few days ago.

The quote is a forceful takedown of the deal and the thought process behind it, but as one Phoenix-based media commentator noted, if the Pac-12 CEO Group knew this deal was so bad, why wasn’t it focused more on getting a better deal and on making sure the conference didn’t die?

Let’s dive into the reactions and criticisms that accompanied Robert Robbins’ takedown of George Kliavkoff in a Pac-12 that is going down in flames … and flame wars:

George Kliavkoff needs to resign as Pac-12 commissioner

If the #Pac12 — now the #Pac4 — merges with the #MountainWest, George Kliavkoff doesn’t deserve to oversee that process.

Now that the Pac-12 Conference is down to four schools, the conference — such as it is — is basically dead.

Maybe it will merge with the Mountain West and continue under the Pac-12 name, but that’s a very technical distinction. The longtime schools that  comprised the Pac-12 have mostly left. USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are gone. You don’t really have a Pac-12, if you don’t have any of those four schools.

Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado are all much younger schools relative to the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles schools. They are — in a historical context — not as significant. Nevertheless, when a conference shrinks from 12 to four, and the only prospect of survival lies in merging with a lower-tier conference that includes Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado State, something has gone very wrong.

Therefore, if we are to consider the idea that the Pac-12 will retain its name (like the label on a soup can) and its Power Five/NCAA Tournament status, the man who presided over an unquestioned disaster, who failed at the task he was hired to perform (getting the media rights deal done) — should not be allowed to handle merger negotiations.

George Kliavkoff needs to resign.

People who made a mess don’t get to clean it up. Others do.

This begins our look at how a merger with the Mountain West should be handled. We continue with other recommendations below:

Oregon Ducks to leave Pac-12, join Big Ten Conference

After 108 years, the Oregon Ducks are leaving the Pac-12 Conference. Hello, Big Ten.

In 1915, the University of Oregon was one of the charter members of a new college athletic conference called the Pacific Coast Conference. It joined forces with the University of California, the University of Washington and Oregon State University.

Now, 108 years later, the Ducks are leaving that conference and heading for greener pastures.

Per multiple reports, Oregon is expected to formally accept an invitation to the Big Ten Conference, following in the footsteps of both the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins, who blazed the path from the West Coast to the Midwest more than a year ago.

The Big Ten is expected to hold a vote this afternoon to agree on extending an invite to the Pac-12 schools, but that is expected to be a unanimous, per ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

[lawrence-related id=45770]

Oregon’s move to the Big Ten was thrown into doubt early on Friday morning. Multiple reports indicated talks “lost momentum” overnight and that Pac-12 presidents were expected to meet with intentions of signing the grant of rights. However, the meeting concluded without a consensus agreement, leaving the door open for the Ducks and Washington Huskies to continue their Big Ten conversations.

With the addition of Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten has 18 members. There is the possibility the conference further expands to 20 teams, but nothing is likely at this point, per multiple reports.

Oregon’s departure from the Pac-12 initially became a serious possibility a year ago in the wake of the move by the Trojans and Bruins. But it was the defection of both the Colorado Buffaloes and Arizona Wildcats in the past 10 days, that got the ball rolling. Both Colorado and Arizona left the Pac-12 for the Big 12 Conference, which further weakened the Pac-12 and made a move to safer waters imperative for the Ducks and others.

[lawrence-related id=45660]

The move was also aided by a lack of confidence in the media revenue deal Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff brought forth.

After almost a year of negotiating with TV partners, Kliavkoff presented a deal to conference presidents earlier this week that was seen as less than stellar. Per multiple reports, the deal was based primarily on streaming with Apple TV, worth an estimated $24 million per year for each remaining school in the conference. The reported deal was to be based on a subscription model to reach the higher end of the revenue projections.

With a lack of confidence in the financials being offered in the Pac-12, it made sense that Oregon would jump to the Big Ten. The conference owns the richest TV revenue deal in the nation — an estimated $8 billion deal with NBC, CBS and Fox that lasts through the 2029-2030 season.

[lawrence-related id=45737]

To get the Big Ten invite, Oregon had to agree to accept a fraction of that revenue in the early years. Still, the Associated Press reports the Ducks will get between $30-35 million per year as part of this deal.

With Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA — four of the biggest brands in the conference — leaving the Pac-12 over the last year, the most pertinent question is where the “Conference of Champions” goes from here.

The most likely scenario is the remaining Four Corner schools — Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah — follow Colorado to the Big 12. That would leave Oregon State, Washington State, Stanford and Cal with nowhere to go. They have a few options, such as merging with the Mountain West Conference or inviting other Group of Five schools to join what would be a new-look Pac-12. However, it’s clear nothing they do would maintain the level of relevancy and fame they have possessed for more than a century.

The landscape of college football forever shifted with Oregon’s move to the Big Ten, for good or for bad.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

What George Kliavkoff never understood about the Pac-12 endgame

Kliavkoff didn’t seem to grasp something which should have been obvious: #Pac12 death would not affect all schools equally.

The Pac-12 CEO Group did not hire good commissioners, nor did it properly empower them to act swiftly and decisively to save the conference. To this extent, the CEOs are centrally responsible for the Pac-12’s existential crisis.

However, George Kliavkoff can’t be shielded from blame. He took this job knowing he had to secure a good media rights deal. It’s why he was hired. Here we are, and there’s no media rights deal, at least not a deal good enough to keep the conference alive.

Kliavkoff got a lot of things wrong, but at the heart of his failure is one central, catastrophic miscalculation which can’t remain ignored or brushed off to the side. That is the focus of this specific piece as “Pac-12 death watch” becomes a very real thing in college sports:

George Kliavkoff did not have a good job interview with the Pac-12 CEO Group

The Pac-12 has arrived at this perilous position for many reasons, but it all begins with one core problem. We’ll explain.

We don’t know exactly what was said in the room when the Pac-12 CEO Group interviewed George Kliavkoff for the job of Pac-12 commissioner a few years ago.

We don’t have a transcript of the dialogue between the Pac-12’s school chancellors and presidents and the people they interviewed to replace Larry Scott.

Yet, as the Pac-12 teeters on the brink of collapse, we can be very confident in saying this much: The job interview process did not go well. It wasn’t handled well. The Pac-12 CEO Group didn’t understand what kind of leader it needed, and George Kliavkoff didn’t fully grasp the dimensions of his situation.

People reading this might say, “But wait: George Kliavkoff took over the Pac-12 before USC and UCLA left for the Big Ten. No one could have anticipated they would leave.”

Narrowly, that might be true. However, the Pac-12 had suffered under Larry Scott. It was not in an advantageous position. Everyone knew it needed a better media rights deal. That’s why Kliavkoff was hired, regardless of whether USC stayed or left.

If you realize that Kliavkoff was supposed to be a dealmaker who got things done, we can look at the present moment and plainly say he hasn’t lived up to that standard. In this regard, he failed to grasp what was needed in the moment.

Let’s talk more about this as “Pac-12 death watch” intensifies:

Social media reacts to reported Pac-12 streaming deal with Apple TV

Social media reacts to reported Pac-12 streaming deal with Apple TV

After more than a year of negotiating and seeking a media rights deal that would see the remaining Pac-12 schools get as much revenue as some of the competing conferences in the nation, commissioner George Kliavkoff finally presented some numbers to his constituents on Tuesday afternoon.

The reception may not have been what he had hoped.

Per a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Kliavkoff presented the Pac-12 presidents and athletic directors with a primary streaming deal with Apple TV on Tuesday. The deal would have incentivized tiers for league members if certain subscription numbers were met for Apple, giving the deal a certain amount of upside, Thamel reports.

There is an expectation that the Pac-12 presidents will once again meet in the coming days to further discuss the deal, but no decisions have been made public at this time.

As anticipated, fans of the Pac-12 and college football in general chimed in via social media to comment on the deal, many of whom took a chance to declare a time of death for the conference.

Will the lackluster numbers result in more defections for the conference that is trying — and apparently failing — to stay afloat? Time will tell. For now, here are some of the best reactions on social media to the new deal numbers that are being floated.

Report: George Kliavkoff presents primary streaming deal with Apple TV to Pac-12 presidents

Per a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff presented a primary streaming deal with Apple TV to Pac-12 presidents.

It has been over a year since George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 conference started shopping around in hopes of finding a new media rights deal. On Tuesday, that deal was finally presented to the conference presidents.

Per a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Kliavkoff presented the Pac-12 presidents and athletic directors with a primary streaming deal with Apple TV on Tuesday. The deal would have incentivized tiers for league members if certain subscription numbers were met for Apple, giving the deal a certain amount of upside, Thamel reports.

[lawrence-related id=45662]

The potential deal was presented to conference presidents and chancellors, as well as athletic directors. The goal for the deal was to keep the remaining nine teams together — down from 12 after USC, UCLA, and Colorado all left for new conferences — with the hopes that the revenue generated from the deal would be enough to do so.

There is an expectation that the Pac-12 presidents will once again meet in the coming days to further discuss the deal, but no decisions have been made public at this time.

[lawrence-related id=45643]

Kilavkoff has been pursuing a new deal to replace the ones that expire in 2024 since Southern California and UCLA announced a little more than a year ago that they will join the Big Ten when the current contracts with ESPN and Fox run out. The negotiations got more difficult for the Pac-12 last year when the Big 12 jumped the line and agreed to an extension with both ESPN and Fox that starts in 2025.

Going forward, the remaining schools in the Pac-9 will vote on whether or not to agree to the media rights deal and go forward with it.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]