Tag: Pac-12 Media Rights

Pac-12, George Kliavkoff allowed themselves to be strong-armed by a professor

An @LATimesSports report details how one school president and professor derailed the deal which would have saved the #Pac12.

If you have lived long enough, you have probably met at least one person who has crazy, outside-the-box ideas. Whether it’s an inventor with all sorts of concepts for new products, or a consultant who insists on being unconventional at every turn, or an ideological true believer with novel theories of politics, there’s at least one person we come across who is out in left field and has a drastically different take on a lot of topics.

If that person is a close friend or relative, we will listen to that person so as to not alienate him or her, but there’s a huge difference between listening and — on the other hand — taking that kind of person’s ideas seriously.

Guess what? The Pac-12 took that person’s ideas seriously … and the conference is on its deathbed as a result.

Brady McCollough of the Los Angeles Times came out with a well-reported, highly-sourced examination of the collapse of the Pac-12 on Wednesday. There are several stories we need to share with you from that report, but the biggest one is that the Pac-12 listened to a wacky fringe professor with a crazy idea. George Kliavkoff, instead of asserting himself as a leader who told the Pac-12 CEO Group what had to be done in a time of crisis, allowed one university president and professor to derail the deal which would have saved the conference.

Plenty of people within the Pac-12 Conference have their suspicions about the identity of the professor (and school) involved, but it will be interesting to see if today’s inclinations and thoughts are confirmed — or refuted — in subsequent days and weeks.

You can’t make this stuff up. Let’s dive into the details:

Pac-12 presidents, George Kliavkoff ignored widely available industry expertise

In July of 2022, after USC left for the #B1G, a consultant estimated a #Pac12 media deal could get $30M per school. He was ignored.

You know by now that the Pac-12 presidents rejected a 2022 offer by ESPN which, if accepted, would have paid out $30 million per school and likely saved the conference. That’s really bad. It’s yet another embarrassment for a conference which is on its last legs and has been reduced to just four schools.

Yet, it gets worse. It always gets worse in the Pac-12. This is how the conference operates. There are always a few more details which make a bad situation even more embarrassing than we all appreciated 24 or 48 hours earlier.

The latest damning details come from Pac-12 insider John Canzano. In his report about longtime sports executive and administrator Oliver Luck being brought in as a consultant to the remaining Pac-4 schools, Canzano also included some notes on a media industry expert the Pac-12 presidents very clearly ignored over the past 13 months.

We have details on that and a lot more below. It’s going to be even more of a headache, but you have to read these details to get an even fuller picture of how badly the Pac-12 presidents messed up:

Pac-12 died because its presidents refused to help USC or acknowledge Trojans’ real value

#Pac12 presidents wouldn’t give #USC an extra revenue share. Then they overestimated the league’s value without USC. Amateur hour.

The Pac-12 presidents, as you know by now, rejected a 2022 ESPN offer that would have paid out $30 million per year to each member school.

That deal would have saved the conference. It would have represented a highly competitive price point when measured against the $31.7 million figure the Big 12 gained for its member schools.

Remember: The Big 12 lost Texas and Oklahoma. Coming in at $31.7 million without those two huge brand names was a legitimate achievement for Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark. Everyone in college sports was impressed Yormark got that much money for his conference with Texas and Oklahoma out of the picture.

The Pac-12 presidents obviously believed that with USC gone, the conference was still worth a lot more than ESPN or the market indicated. The presidents didn’t seem to factor the absence of USC into their calculations. They disregarded the importance of the USC football brand and how much that meant to the conference.

Keep in mind: This was not the first time Pac-12 presidents fatally underappreciated USC’s value to the conference.

During Larry Scott’s tenure — when the seeds of the Pac-12’s destruction were planted — the conference refused to give the Trojans an extra revenue share that would have kept them happy as a conference member. This was a known issue. The conference refused to do anything about it. When George Kliavkoff took over from Larry Scott in 2021, he did not have enough time to mend this fractured situation. USC left one year after Kliavkoff took over.

Now we can see Pac-12 presidents continued to dismiss USC’s real value to the conference. Here we are, with the Pac-12 lying in ruins.

USC fans and other national observers were quick to notice how losing the Los Angeles TV market seemed to have no effect on the Pac-12’s calculations, leading to the disastrous decision to reject ESPN’s 2022 media deal:

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:

Pac-12 media rights disaster is hard to describe, but the details say it all

How can administrators and executives be so shortsighted and unprepared? #ThatsSoPac12.

We all know the Pac-12 failed on an epic scale in allowing the conference to get blown apart. We all know the pursuit of a media rights deal turned into an all-time disaster, a memorable train wreck which will be written about for decades as an example of how not to negotiate.

We all know this. We all know the Pac-12 embarrassed and humiliated itself on a national scale, committing a mistake of biblical proportions.

It’s actually somehow worse than you might think. Yes, the Pac-12 is not led by great leaders. The conference is one big clown car.

It’s worse than that.

A report from Stewart Mandel of The Athletic detailed just how bad this process was. You can read it if you’d like to, but if you don’t, we’ll share the central details of it and add some commentary to fill in some of the blanks.

Let’s go inside the final, disastrous failure which essentially ended the Pac-12 Conference as we know it:

Biggest frustration with the Pac-12? It’s hard to pick just one

No clarity. No guts. No intelligence. So much has been lacking in the #Pac12’s response. It’s not just one thing. It’s everything.

We noted earlier this week that George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 CEO Group did not understand the stakes involved when the CEOs interviewed Kliavkoff for the Pac-12 commissioner job.

If the two parties — the interviewer and the interviewee — really grasped what was on the line, they would have created a clear understanding that Kliavkoff needed to be fully empowered to act to save the conference. The presidents and chancellors had to get out of the way and allow Kliavkoff to strike a deal.

If Kliavkoff did feel — at any point in the process — that the Pac-12 presidents were restraining him and preventing him from doing his job properly, he either should have resigned or should have threatened to resign. One way or another, the commish and the presidents were not on the same page. Whether you blame Kliavkoff or the Pac-12 CEO Group, it’s clear the two sides didn’t have a firm understanding of what needed to be done. That’s a huge frustration for Pac-12 fans with this larger process.

Ducks Wire helped us identify other specific frustrations with this very sad saga in the Pac-12:

Pac-12 merger with ACC was a good idea, but Pac-12 didn’t strike when it had a chance

The #Pac12 has been painfully slow to act on its feet. @Ducks_Wire rightly says the #ACC merger idea is a ship which has sailed.

It has been fascinating to see the realignment wheel spin in the summer of 2023 for all sorts of reasons here at Trojans Wire. One is that when we Google search certain topics such as “Pac-12 ACC merger,” we have seen our stories from July of 2022 emerge in those searches. The things we wrote 13 months ago still apply in many ways.

What has changed is the Pac-12 has run out of time and has even less leverage. On its face, a Pac-12 merger with the ACC seems like a great idea, but the Pac-12 has been so painfully slow to act that it doesn’t have the time or the leverage to create an 11th-hour rescue plan for the conference.

Ducks Wire joined us in discussing this point, as you’ll see below: