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: