| FTBL 4 Part Series on the Pac 12 - Larry Scott's questionable spending habits

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Left out: How Larry Scott and the Pac-12 continue to lose ground in the college football arms race
Updated Nov 27, 10:41 PM; Posted Nov 27, 8:58 AM
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Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott has the sweetest administrative compensation package in all of college athletics at $4.8 million a year. (File Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)


By John Canzano
The Oregonian/OregonLive

SAN FRANCISCO -- The seven-story building located at 360 Third St. in downtown San Francisco has large glass doors, plenty of natural light and a landscaped rooftop deck. It lies within a walk of AT&T Park, in the heart of the technology world, on the one of the most expensive commercial real estate footprints in the country.

The Pac-12 Conference headquarters occupies more than 100,000 square feet on the third and fourth floors. The studios for the Pac-12 Network are here, as well as the Centralized Instant-Replay Command Center.

The conference moved the operation here in 2011 with the aim of growing a television network, boosting revenue and seizing the synergy with the tech industry. The vision wasn't just to keep pace in major college athletics, but for the oft-overlooked conference to accelerate to the forefront using the Bay Area as a launch pad.

In the process, the headquarters became the 13th member of the conference.

From officiating issues to high operating costs to being left out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight year, the Pac-12 Conference is facing a multitude of problems. This is part one in a four-part series that takes a deeper look at what is ailing the conference.

League executives will tell you the plan is a success. They say the conference is competitive now, and well positioned for the future. But fans know better, and internal records tell a more complicated story. The financials of the Pac-12, when compared to its peers nationally, paint a picture of a conference that is operating lavishly and producing significantly less revenue for its members.

The lightning - or lightning rod - behind the conference's dramatic transformation is Commissioner Larry Scott, a 53-year old former Harvard tennis player.

Conference insiders cast Scott as whip-smart and a scary-good negotiator. Others say he fosters a totalitarian culture, revels in the luxurious perks of his job, and uses his shrewd negotiating tactics in ways that harm the conference itself.

"Larry is a lavish guy; he likes extravagance," said Bill Moos, the former Oregon and Washington State athletic director, who is now at Nebraska. "He runs the Pac-12 like he's the commissioner of Major League Baseball."

The Pac-12 Conference touts itself as "The Conference of Champions" and it wins titles in sports such as cross country, track and field, gymnastics, baseball and volleyball. But the conference hasn't registered nationally where it counts most in college athletics -- football.

In fact the Pac-12 feels further away, maybe than ever, to mattering on the national stage in the biggest revenue-generating sport in college athletics.

Last season, Scott's conference went 1-8 in the college football bowl season. It marked the worst postseason performance by a Power-Five Conference in history. The Pac-12 will get shut out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight season. And there are questions about the cost of doing business, and whether Scott has the Pac-12 positioned to keep pace with its peers.

Was moving the longtime Bay Area headquarters to its high-rent location a wise move for the conference -- or a Scott misfire that now haunts the football programs?

"All of our eyebrows went up a little bit when the conference moved from Walnut Creek to San Francisco," Moos said. "There's a reason ESPN is in Bristol (Connecticut) and not Manhattan.

"But Larry likes to go first cabin."

Has it been worth it? And if not, who's to blame? Scott? His bosses, the university presidents? Or Pac-12 Conference fans themselves? Depends on who you ask.



---

Rick Neuheisel left last year's college football bowl season concerned about the Pac-12 Conference. The former Washington, Colorado and UCLA coach saw something alarming.

It wasn't just that dismal record in the Pac-12 bowl season. It wasn't just that Penn State beat Washington in the Fiesta Bowl and Ohio State blasted USC in the Cotton Bowl. Or that the Pac-12 got outscored by a combined 87 points in the nine bowl games.

Neuheisel's biggest concern was the shrinking size of Pac-12 players.

"The size disparity was ridiculous," Neuheisel said. "We, as a conference, have to get bigger. We play in this league that is small, skilled and make all kinds of plays, but we don't look the part physically. We don't have the ability to recruit and have the bells and whistles because the money isn't coming in as it should."

Here's what each conference distributed (per university member) in the last reported tax year:
SEC -- $41 million.
Big Ten -- $37 million.
Pac-12 -- $31 million.

Neuheisel has the lack of economic parity pegged. But what he and some others don't know is that the Pac-12 Conference isn't just distributing less to its members, it's also spending at a higher clip in key categories such as office rent, executive-team salaries and travel.

That popular SEC motto "It Just Means More," could add, "It Also Costs Less."

Scott negotiated the sweetest administrative compensation package in all of college athletics for himself: $4.8 million a year.

Don't blame Scott for that. Blame his bosses, right? Scott, who came to the conference after running the Women's Tennis Association, is actually paid significantly more than his bosses. And those bosses run some of the largest and most prestigious universities in the country.

Scott makes far more than Oregon State president Edward Ray ($588,000) and Oregon's Michael Schill ($674,000). In fact, the commissioner makes more than any of the Pac-12 Conference head football coaches.

Scott is also paid more than Greg Sankey, the Southeastern Conference commissioner, who makes $1.9 million a year by comparison. Also, Scott makes more than Jim Delany, the Big Ten Conference commissioner, who brings home $2.4 million a year.

Sankey makes less than all 14 head football coaches in the SEC. He's out-earned by Alabama coach Nick Saban by more than $6 million annually. And Delany, in the Big Ten, earns about $5 million a year less than Michigan's Jim Harbaugh and makes less than all but two of the conference's head coaches.

Some of the athletic directors who have worked with Scott don't like him. That's not unusual for the gatekeeper in his position. He's not endeared to some of the football and basketball coaches, either.

Not unusual, either. His act has chapped media and fans at times, too.

But he has significant influence on the university presidents, or at least the core group that includes old-guard holdovers such as Oregon State's Ray, Arizona State's Michael Crow and UCLA chancellor Gene Block. And insiders will tell you that's how Scott maintains a foothold on his position despite swelling mistrust and discontent from the public.

The Pac-12 university presidents -- known as the "Pac-12 CEO Group" -- met in mid-November and reviewed budgets and discussed other matters. "No questions or concerns regarding the location of the conference offices were raised during our discussions," OSU's Ray said.

Ray also said: "I am comfortable with our present position with regard to Pac-12 operating costs."

By comparison, the SEC is headquartered in a 25-year-old, two-story building in Birmingham, Ala. The rent costs the conference $318,000 a year.

The Big Ten Conference office makes its primary home in suburban Chicago and also, has a satellite office in New York. Annual rent: $1.5 million.

The Pac-12 Conference headquarters cost the conference $6.9 million in rent in the last reported fiscal year. They're also carrying $11.7 million in deferred rent.

It's not just the headquarters real estate that cost the conference. Scott was hired in July 2009. Eight months later, records show he bought a 4,600-square-foot home on one acre in the upscale Blackhawk Country Club subdivision in Danville, Calif. Sale price: $1,850,000.

His initial contract with the Pac-12 included a $1,861,842 million relocation loan. That loan remains unpaid. Scott is required to pay it back in full.

The SEC's Sankey and his top-five compensated employees make a total of $3.9 million annually. Delany, from the Big Ten, and his top five lieutenants make $4 million.

The Pac-12 commissioner and his top-five salaried staffers rake in $8.4 million in annual compensation.

Andrew Walker, the Pac-12 Conference vice president of public affairs and head of communications, called the comparison between Power Five conferences "completely apples to oranges."

The Pac-12's defense lies in its position as an outlier: It's the only conference that owns and runs its own television network. Of the 112 full-time employees who work for the Pac-12, only 42 work for the conference itself. The rest are employed by the network. The SEC and Big Ten sell their media rights but aren't in the media-production business. The Pac-12 offices include 90,000 of square footage dedicated to studios, production bays, control rooms and a host of directors, technicians, equipment and talent.

Scott's role, the argument goes, is overseeing not just conference matters but the media network as well. There's a significant equity value attached to the network, sure, but that doesn't help pay the bills or get the Pac-12 into the lucrative football playoff.

When Washington reached the playoff in 2016, it was worth $450,000 to each of the Pac-12 Conference members. The conference itself also received an equal share.
Football produces the bulk of the revenue for big-time college athletic departments. And that's no different in the Pac-12, where football subsidizes a host of non-revenue generating Olympic sports.

The cost of maintaining its own television network is substantial. The failure to get distribution of the Pac-12 Network on DirecTV is a maddening issue for fans and coaches. Insiders say the ratings, guarded carefully by the conference, are a disappointment. There's private grumbling from ADs and coaches about less money and exposure compared to the other Power 5 conferences, but few will speak publicly. In part, because Scott has a reputation among staffers in the conference for being vindictive toward those who speak out against him.

Pac-12 Conference football coaches are the ones charged with winning football games and competing for the coveted College Football Playoff berths against peer programs that originate from the SEC and Big Ten.

"To think that college football at the top isn't an arms race is naive," Neuheisel said. "Those at the top need to have the bells and whistles."

Of the 16 teams to make the College Football Playoff in its first four seasons, only two have hailed from Scott's Pac-12 (Oregon in 2015 and Washington in 2016). Neither won a title.

Sankey's SEC has placed five teams in the playoff, including two national champions. Three Big Ten teams have made playoff appearances in Delany's tenure, and one of those won it all.

The Pac-12's choice to run its own network and lock into early distribution agreements has left the conference on the sidelines as others negotiated lucrative television rights deals and digital rights fees.

In the summer of 2017, the Big Ten announced a six-year deal with ESPN and Fox Sports worth $2.64 billion.

It's a game changer that is expected to net each Big Ten member a distribution of more than $50 million annually. Again, Pac-12 members received a $31 million distribution in the last fiscal year. It's left the conference having to make more from less. Consider, too, that Oregon State's athletic department is sitting on $40 million in accrued debt.

Many of the conference members are still footing the bill for large-scale renovations and expansions to their athletics facilities. Cal reported $18.7 million in debt-service payments in its fiscal year 2017. Washington had more than $16 million. Washington State ($10 million) and Colorado ($15 million) are also on the hook. And Oregon reported $19 million for the same period.

Earlier this season, Scott showed up at football media day in Hollywood and trumpeted the notion that the Pac-12 was well positioned for the next round of media rights' negotiations -- in 2024.

It landed with a thud.

Scott emphasized that during those negotiations the Pac-12 would be the only conference to own all of its rights (television and digital) free and clear.

Scott may be right -- but it may also prove to be too late. Consider that each SEC member stands to receive $10 million more annually from its conference headquarters than Pac-12 members in that span.

That's a minimum disparity of $60-million for each of the Pac-12 Conference members vs. SEC members over the next six seasons.

"The Pac-12 has to be really smart," Neuheisel said. "They've got to carve out more revenue so that USC and Washington, and those that are carrying the flag in the conference from a physical standpoint aren't completely dwarfed by these other teams anymore.

"The Pac-12 is trying to get one or two of those giant defensive linemen. Alabama and some of those SEC schools have 12 or 13 of those guys. You just can't compete unless you capture all the possible revenue."

Dave Bartoo, managing partner of Matrix Analytical Solutions, consults with some of the top football programs in the country. When asked if handing each member university even another $500,000 annually would make a significant difference, Bartoo offered a sobering thought.

"It could be the difference between your program getting a top offensive or defensive coordinator and missing out," he said. "Can we buy extra strength and conditioning coaches? Can we buy better nutrition? How about a better weight room?"

Bartoo believes those are questions the university presidents should be asking conference leadership.

Walker, the conference spokesman, replied: "We are confident that we are operating in a highly efficient manner, and our budgets are reviewed and approved by both our finance and audit committee and our full CEO Group."



---

Larry Scott boarded a Raytheon Hawker 800 chartered jet in Seattle at Boeing Field on Saturday, Oct. 20, and the eight-seat aircraft took off for Pullman, Washington.
Scott had just appeared in the press box at Husky Stadium at halftime of the Washington-Colorado game, and he'd soon face difficult questions during another halftime.
This one at Martin Stadium.

Washington State was up 27-0 on Oregon. But that's not what Scott would talk about. Instead, he'd be peppered by media during the intermission about blistering text messages sent by Cougars' coach Mike Leach regarding the instant-replay fiasco in the Sept. 21 WSU-USC game.

Leach called Pac-12 general counsel Woodie Dixon, "a coward." And he wrote to Dixon: "Why can't I help wondering if you're trying to manipulate wins and losses?"
Dixon - who is untrained in officiating -- called into the conference's Centralized Instant-Replay Command Center during the Sept. 21 game and overruled the replay officials on a controversial targeting call. The move raised questions about how often it previously happened, and eroded trust in the league's officiating.

Scott insisted Dixon "made a mistake" and called it an "isolated incident." And the commissioner scoffed when reporters in the press box said the actions hurt the trust and transparency the conference needed for its fans, players and coaches.

"My responsibility is to our members," Scott said at halftime of the Oregon-WSU game. "That's the trust and transparency."

Scott was specifically talking about serving his bosses, the Pac-12 CEO Group. But what about his obligation to fans? Ticket holders? And Pac-12 players and coaches?
"My obligation is to our members," Scott reiterated, "to uphold the highest level of integrity."

The conference vice president of communications, David Hirsch, stood off to one side listening to his boss. When it was over, Hirsch, a 23-year employee of the conference, settled back into his second-row press box seat to watch the second half of the game. He'd return to the Bay Area on a commercial airline the following day.

But Scott was already long gone. The chartered aircraft carrying the commissioner landed at Buchanan Field in the Contra Costa County airport well before the fans at WSU had even stormed the field, swarming quarterback Gardner Minshew, celebrating the Cougars' victory over the Ducks.

In a 24-hour period, the aircraft had traveled from Las Vegas to Phoenix to Seattle to Pullman to that small airfield not far from Scott's residence.

While the focus that weekend was on the officiating gaffe, the commissioner's travel schedule underscored another issue with the conference headquarters.

The SEC spent $788,000 on travel in the last reported fiscal year. The Big 10 spent $542,000 in conference travel expenses.

The Pac-12 Conference spent a total of $3.1 million. The Pac-12 will tell you this is, in part, because it's the only conference to run and own its own television network.

But when you examine the salary expenses, the rents, and the transportation costs, it makes you wonder why the Pac-12 didn't set up headquarters in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City or Phoenix. Also, the Pac-12 offers some employees a housing allowance as part of the compensation package due to the high cost of real estate in the region.

Said Neuheisel: "As beautiful as the offices are, it's a high-rent district. There are less expensive locations within the football footprint."

Walker, the Pac-12 Conference spokesperson, said Scott isn't to blame for that.

"The decision to situate the Conference headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area as opposed to other member university markets was made by the Pac-12 CEO Group," he said. "This decision was made prior to Commissioner Scott assuming his role."

Walker is essentially right. The Pac-12 Conference office had long been located in Walnut Creek -- 25 miles east of San Francisco -- in a modest building with fewer than a dozen employees.

But it moved to the San Francisco location early in Scott's tenure and grew exponentially. Then-Pac-12 Enterprises president Gary Stevenson negotiated an 11-year lease on the downtown building owned by Kilroy Realty in 2011.

The Pac-12 Conference signed on to occupy two of the seven floors in the building. Stevenson told reporters at the time: "We love the vibrancy of San Francisco and believe it will be very conducive to the environment we envision."

Putting the headquarters in downtown San Francisco came at the insistence of Scott some say. He was interested in the high-rent address and the ability to network closely with tech-world executives.

"There are significant advantages from a recruitment perspective in attracting the best talent for a media company to be located in San Francisco, as opposed to in the suburbs or most other cities..." Walker said. "Additionally, there are advantages to being in the same location as a number of technology companies with whom we have existing or potential partnerships."

But those tech-company partnerships haven't flourished in the way the conference hoped.

In early November, the Pac-12 announced expanded partnerships with Audi and Jack in the Box, headquartered not in the Bay Area but in Virginia and San Diego, Calif. It also announced a new partnership with Texas-based Dr. Pepper and Maui Jim sunglasses, which is headquartered in Illinois. Late last year, the conference partnered with China-based Alibaba, to bring Pac-12 games to audiences in China.

The Pac-12 partnered with Twitter to stream nine events in late 2016 including the Harvard-ASU ice hockey game. The conference met with Facebook in the summer of 2016 and was invited to experiment with the social media company's video tool. It has worked with YouTube to create some content. However, the Big Ten Conference and SEC also have partnerships with the same social media partners.

That a lucrative Bay Area tech partnership hasn't materialized for the Pac-12 Conference is a sense of growing frustration.



---

The Pac-12 Conference benefited from a healthy cut of the proceeds to cover its own expenses in the last reported fiscal year.

It made those $31 million distributions to Oregon, Oregon State, and the rest of the conference members. But before that, the conference headquarters took $49 million off the top for "management and general expenses." It had total expenses of $139 million.

Which is only to say that the conference has done one thing exceptionally well inside that 113,000 square feet of office space - the Pac-12 offices have treated itself like the 13th and most important member.

Given that the Pac-12 continues to spend more than its peers on office rent, executive salaries and travel while raising less revenue, it's worth a deeper discussion. The conference is now faced with a second straight postseason in which it will not make the College Football Playoff. Part of that feels rooted in funding of the programs.

That it maintains its expensive travel, high-rent office space and Bay Area tech-industry salaries to do so makes you wonder.

Why not run a much leaner operation and give a larger distribution back to the members?

It's a question for the CEO Group, who we'd all hope examine the sports arm of their campuses with the same fiduciary scrutiny they dedicate to the rest of the operation.

To that, Dr. Ray at Oregon State said, "All of the CEOs are thoughtfully engaged in our discussions."

Where does the buck stop? Scott is the commissioner, charged like Sankey and Delany with putting the conference football programs in position to succeed.

Is it the CEO Group's responsibility? After all, it has oversight of Scott and doesn't appear motivated to change anything.

What about the Pac-12 football fanbase? Pac-12 fans don't show up 80,000 strong on any given Saturday, helping the conference print money. That's fact. But late-night kickoff times and poor television distribution haven't helped that cause, either. Allowing its network to set kickoff times, sometimes as little as six days before the game, has made it difficult on Pac-12 fans.

The Pac-12 Conference will never be consistently first tier in college football without financial parity. That's the current reality. And the conference is about to go into a six-year financial-disparity slide that will be difficult to overcome.
Neuheisel said conference leadership must improve.

"They can do better. There's no question they can do better," he said. "They keep thinking things will turn but it won't until they get players again.

"And that's not happening until they get money going."

The competition on the field depends on it. Is the Pac-12 Conference serious about winning? Does it have its act together behind the scenes? At least one conference coach wondered if executives were steering outcomes of games. So are they?

Like conference finances, it's worth a deeper examination.

On Wednesday, Part Two: Behind the Scenes at the Pac-12 Centralized Instant-Replay Command Center.
 


SAN FRANCISCO -- Woodie Dixon wore a pair of slacks, a zip-up sweater jacket, and a pair of blue Adidas low-top sneakers to the office a couple of Saturdays ago. He had a sandwich for lunch. And he watched Pac-12 Conference football.

Lots of it. All day long.

Dixon, the league's general counsel and head of football, sat beside David Coleman, the Pac-12 head of officiating, in the downtown San Francisco headquarters.

The men were bellied-up to a high-top counter in front of eight television screens and 16 computer monitors. The words "VIDEO ADMINISTRATION ROOM" were printed outside on the glass doors. In the adjacent room, the replay officials in the Centralized Instant-Replay Command Center were busy debating and discussing football plays with 26 television monitors and computer screens flickering around them.

It was like Buffalo Wild Wings -- without the wings.

UCLA and Arizona State were playing a football game and Bruins coach Chip Kelly called timeout a few seconds before halftime. It got Dixon's attention. Kelly was gesturing across the field at Sun Devils' coach Herm Edwards and pointing at the press box. Edwards looked confused.

Then, play resumed, UCLA took a knee to end the half and Kelly was intercepted by the television sideline reporter for a quick interview. Dixon, who had been sitting in silence, was now on his feet and pointing at one of the television screens.

"Turn that one up," he ordered a technician.

The sound came on. Kelly explained to the audience that he called timeout because he wanted to give his assistants in the coaching box upstairs a head start on getting to the locker room before the intermission.

Dixon, 45, is the central figure in the instant-replay officiating scandal that rocked the conference earlier this season. During the Sept. 21 Washington State vs. USC game, he was watching the game from home when an instant-replay review was initiated. In question, was a potential targeting call.

Dixon has no officiating experience.

He has no specialized instant-replay training.

He isn't supposed to be anywhere near the process. And yet, somehow, Dixon intervened and overruled both the in-stadium replay official and the team working at the conference's centralized command center.

"There was a mistake that was made here; there's no question about that," Dixon's boss, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, said.

But what was the mistake exactly? And why did the conference conceal the punishment of the guilty parties? Also, how did flawed Pac-12 Conference office culture play into an officiating scandal that has eroded the trust of coaches, administrators and the public?

Dixon's phone call, it turns out, is just part of the problem.

---

Bill Richardson was a longtime football and basketball referee. Now, he's the supervisor of instant-replay officials for the Pac-12.

He spends a good portion of his work shift on his feet, moving around the centralized command center while wearing a headset and peering at as many as eight different camera angles of a given play. He's in communication with the instant-replay booth in various conference stadiums, too. Also, he has a direct line to the referees on the field. There is a lot of audio traffic on his headset.

To avoid confusion, Richardson decided this season that any instruction coming from the command center would be prefaced with, "San Francisco..."

As in, "San Francisco confirms the call on the field." Or, "San Franciscorules that it's a fumble, recovered by UCLA."

"Our job is to get it right," Richardson said.

He's a well-decorated official. He's worked in an NFL instant-replay booth. As an on-field official, he worked the 1999 BCS National Championship game between Tennessee and Florida State.

Beside him on this Saturday in the replay booth is Mike Batlan. He lives in Salem and commutes to San Francisco for his work shift. Batlan, who spent 16 seasons as a referee in the conference, has been an instant-replay official since 2017. He has a pristine reputation, works well with Richardson, and was assigned the UCLA-ASU game.

Batlan said: "Our job is to be effective, accurate and efficient."


Also in the dimly lit room, wearing a dress shirt and tie is Mike Ortiz. He spent nearly five years working for football coach Mike Riley at Oregon State as the video coordinator beginning in 2007. Ortiz also had stints at Colorado and Washington. His title now: director of video operations for the Pac-12 Conference.

It's a qualified group of experts, using the most-impressive technology available. In fact, the command center is tapped into the dedicated high-speed data lines that serve the conference universities. Those lines, buried beneath the flooring, transmit 10 gigabytes of data per second.

Ortiz's video team not only gets the feed faster than anyone else, but it then uses state-of-the-art equipment to slow the action to the millisecond, frame-by-frame, sometimes in angles not available to the television broadcast.

The system appears largely foolproof.

Except, it wasn't on Sept. 21. Because Richardson's team in the command center got submarined when Dixon picked up the telephone and interfered on the final play of the third quarter of Washington State's game against USC.

Trojans quarterback JT Daniels dropped to a knee on the play. WSU linebacker Logan Tago dove and initiated helmet-to-helmet contact. In-stadium replay officials ruled targeting, which would have ejected Tago. Officials in San Francisco's command center agreed. But Dixon, at home watching the game, overruled them both.

Later in the game, on Washington State's final drive, quarterback Gardner Minshew took a helmet-to-helmet shot from a USC defender. It resulted in a non-call, eliciting a curious comment from Cougars' coach Mike Leach two days after the game.

Said Leach: "I'm not allowed to comment on it - but I'll tell you the guy that can I think you gotta call is Woodie Dixon at the Pac-12 offices. I'd love to comment on it if I was allowed to, but I'm not allowed to."

WSU lost to USC, 39-36. If targeting or unnecessary roughness had been called on the Minshew hit, it would have given the Cougars a first down and a chance to tie or win the game. That outcome is still a sore subject in Pullman. That unfortunate loss to the Trojans did damage. Even before Washington beat the Cougars in the snow last weekend in the Palouse, WSU was a long shot to crack the College Football Playoff.

Now, the 10-2 Cougars aren't even in the Pac-12 Championship Game. Instead, Washington and Utah play on Friday for a trip to the Rose Bowl. And staff at Pac-12 headquarters have been given talking points on how to respond to media questions about Dixon's interference.

"That's all behind us now," Ortiz said.

But it's not really.

Reporters continue to ask the Pac-12 Conference about the lack of transparency. Some fans lost faith and wonder how many other games were affected by similar meddling. And while conference coaches are deterred from speaking publicly by fines, some of them have privately wondered if the conference is trying to steer the outcome of games to protect its most valued programs.

In text messages, WSU coach Leach - who has a law degree from Pepperdine - ripped Dixon, Coleman and Scott. He accused Scott of being a hypocrite when it comes to player safety, he blistered Coleman, and he attacked Dixon's credibility in the texts, which emerged in a public-records request by Yahoo Sports after Leach's post-game remarks.

"Why can't I help wondering, if you're trying to manipulate wins and losses?" Leach texted Dixon.

Dixon shot back: "Mike don't ever again accuse [me] of manipulating wins and losses. Please show this text to your AD and have him give me a call."

It was a revealing exchange.

In it, Dixon reminded Leach that there's a conference pecking order. Scott, the commissioner, isn't known as a collaborative decisionmaker. Coaches and athletic directors say he doesn't regularly consult with them. Not even on matters of football policy. Scott works more closely with his own bosses -- the university presidents and chancellors.

"Larry is more apt to call and tell you what is going to happen, rather than ask for your input," said ex-Oregon and ex-Washington State AD Bill Moos, now at Nebraska.

Rick Neuheisel, who once coached at UCLA, Washington and Colorado, said under Scott's direction, "there's an aristocratic feeling, for sure, at the conference headquarters."

Dixon is a Harvard-educated lawyer. He previously worked for the Kansas City Chiefs as a salary-cap manager. But nothing in his background or his job duties suggests Dixon should be involved with an in-game football decision.

"That's the one guy that should realize he shouldn't be there," Neuheisel said. "The replay process should only be guys that know every rule known to man. Woodie knows that. He should not have been anywhere near that process."

The conference announced on Oct. 24 that it had disciplined "certain Pac-12 personnel responsible for the inadequate procedures and involved in the inappropriate influencing of the replay official's decision in the USC vs. Washington State game." The release was issued at 4:10 p.m.

It didn't reveal which Pac-12 employees were disciplined or what the penalties were. However, at 8:31 p.m. the same day, the Pac-12 issued a second news release announcing that Arizona State defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales had been fined $5,000 for criticizing the officiating after ASU's loss to Stanford the previous week.

"The Pac-12 has specific rules that prohibit our coaches from making public comments about officiating, and this prohibition includes comments that create doubts about the credibility of the conference's officiating program," Scott said in the release.

It was a move that underscores the culture of the Pac-12 headquarters. Leaders declined to publicly reprimand and punish high-ranking personnel for actions that created doubts about credibility, yet it publicly fined and punished an assistant coach who they said did essentially the same thing.

Andrew Walker, head of communications for the Pac-12, said: "In agreement with our members it was decided that we would not make public the discipline on employees that we announced in our prior press release on this matter. Coaches discipline - including what is/is not made public - is specified in our rulebook, which is agreed to by our members."

The Oregonian/OregonLive has since learned that the "certain Pac-12 personnel" disciplined were Woodie Dixon and head of officiating David Coleman.

When Gonzales was asked if the double standard for punishment bothered him, he chuckled, and offered: "No comment."

No kidding.


---

Tony Corrente quit in the middle of the 2014 football season. He was the Pac-12 Conference coordinator of officiating. The abrupt resignation caused a stir across the conference.

Scott called Corrente's departure "unfortunate," in a news release on Oct. 9 of that year. That same release indicated that the resignation was due to both "personal and professional" reasons. Corrente, still an NFL official and now in his 24th season, has never revealed why he left.

Multiple sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Corrente's sudden resignation was fueled by weeks of frustration with Pac-12 leadership. He'd grown weary with the conference's failure to publicly support his team of officials. Also, he was tired of hearing from griping coaches. Conference coaches who spoke regularly with Corrente said in the days before his resignation he sounded increasingly discouraged and even told one, "I may not be here much longer."

An executive-level conference source said Corrente was faced with working closely with Dixon, who regularly offered guidance and criticism of the league's officials.

"It's an issue," the source said. "It's constant criticism without reason. Tony had constant interference with his job."

The weekend before Corrente quit, Arizona beat then-No. 2 Oregon. USC also lost an early-season game. Stanford did, too. Coaches were grumbling. Leadership was tense. Some controversial officiating decisions were at issue. The contenders in the conference had suffered unfortunate early-season losses. At stake was a College Football Playoff berth worth a $6 million distribution to the conference.

Basically, the Pac-12 couldn't get out of its own way.

But Corrente did.

"He was tired of all the pressure," one head coach said.

Corrente, reached via telephone last week, said, "I appreciate you reaching out to me but my contract with the NFL prohibits me from having any contact with the media. Thank you for understanding."

His midseason resignation remains a troubling indicator. It draws attention to the importance some conference leaders had placed on stability, professionalism, integrity and trust. Corrente is known as a stand-up guy. It's not hard to find sources who tell you he quit because he couldn't continue to work in the conference's toxic atmosphere.

Long-time official Dave Cutaia worked at the conference headquarters as the Head of Officiating under two different Pac-12 commissioners -- Tom Hansen and Larry Scott. Cutaia, whose tenure spanned 2007-11, said there was a shift in work environment as Scott's regime took over and Dixon came on the scene.

"Tom would ask questions about officiating if he had questions, or thought something was incorrect, but Tom never interfered," Cutaia said. "He'd make recommendations, but he never advised me to 'Do this' or 'Do that.' The change of environment was noticeable. Under Larry Scott, there was more direct involvement with officiating than under Tom Hansen."

Cutaia said he was never asked to steer the outcome of a game or a individual call. But he felt the conference was more "hands-on" and worked to control public perception of its officiating. He also said Dixon should not have involved himself in an instant-replay decision.

"It was extremely troubling," Cutaia said. "It was troubling to me. I don't know the call on the field, I haven't talked with anybody about it, but it is troubling. Whether it be the Pac-12 or ACC or any conference, anything out of the officiating structure is problematic.

"Never should you be getting a call from outside the officiating structure telling you to 'do A' or to 'do B.'"

It makes Dixon's actions on Sept. 21 during the WSU-USC game more alarming.

"Woodie's held in very high regard by our schools," Scott said weeks after the incident. "He's held in high regard nationally, and by me. There was a mistake that was made here, there's no question about that and we've taken corrective action."

What was the mistake?

"The mistake was leaving any doubt about who makes our replay decisions and weighing in in a way that our replay officials thought they were being instructed to make a call," Scott said.

None of this would have been problematic for the Pac-12 had Yahoo Sports not obtained a copy of the replay report filed after the game. In it, replay official Gary McNanna made an unusual notation. He indicated that he believed there should have been a targeting call but "unfortunately a third party did not agree," with the call.

Scott could have helped himself, too, if he hadn't immediately issued a statement denying there was "a third party" involved. It was a stance the conference commissioner clumsily abandoned days later. One that also cost him within the halls of his own offices. Members of his staff wondered to each other whether his initial position was a case of Scott being foolish, arrogant or a combination of both.

Days later, in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive Scott said that he wasn't sure if an instant replay manual for the conference existed. Then, days later, the commissioner announced he'd looked into it, and was certain there was not an instant replay manual.

"There's an NCAA rule in writing," he said, "but there is no manual."

Hours later, The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained a copy of an 11-page publication titled, "The Pac-12 Conference Instant Replay Manual."

The document was explicit about which party has the authority on instant-replay calls. It reads: "The Replay Official is the only person in the booth with the authority to make a decision on a play, however all reviews will occur as a collaborative effort with the centralized replay command center in San Francisco."

In a statement, the Pac-12 said the 11-page document is an operations guide for replay staff, not an instant-replay manual.

Dixon continues to work within a few feet of the command center on game days. The conference says he has a job to do as its football supervisor. But given what's transpired, Dixon's presence just a few feet away from the replay process he once disrupted is a bad look.

Scott said: "I'm not aware of any other incident where our replay officials have had a concern."

Why the replay officials thought Dixon was ordering them to change their call on Sept. 21 isn't a mystery to some who work in the conference headquarters. To them, the whole mess was just another symptom of a troubling top-down culture.


---

In March 2017, during the Pac-12 men's basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the conference staff was alerted that Larry Scott would soon make a major announcement.

There was about to be news. Big news, some thought.

Staffers buzzed in anticipation and speculated that Scott had finally closed the Pac-12 Network's long-awaited distribution deal with DirecTV. Then, a video was distributed to employees featuring Scott, in a solo shot, with the Las Vegas strip pictured behind him on a green screen.

The big news? Scott announced that he was getting a five-year contraction extension from the Pac-12 CEO Group. Scott looked delighted. He informed his staff that they'd get to continue the work they'd started through 2022.

It didn't play well.

Especially not with lower paid staffers living in downtown San Francisco, some two or three to a high-rent apartment. But the moment emphasized how out of touch the upper-management team at the Pac-12 headquarters could often be.

The Pac-12 conducted an employee survey in 2016 in the name of measuring its corporate culture and workplace satisfaction.

Walker, the head of communications, called the survey "good governance and best practice for best-in-class organizations." But the staff saw survey as a chance to vent.

The results of the survey were a shock to upper management. The data indicated a surprising amount of dissatisfaction from staffers.

Pac-12 top management was criticized by employees for failing to leave their offices and integrate with staff, among other things.

Said one former employee: "There was a constant divide in that building."

Scott and his five-highest paid lieutenants make $8.4 million a year in annual compensation. Woodie Dixon makes $587,141 - higher compensation than the conference presidents at UCLA, Colorado and Washington State. Also, light-years in front of what the replay officials, who are contractors and Dixon's subordinates, are paid for a day's work.

"He's got seniority in the organization," Scott explained.

Dixon exercised it on Sept. 21.

Coming Thursday, PART 3: Commissioner Larry Scott plays a game of chicken with DirecTV ... and Pac-12 football fans lose.
 
LOL, they pulled the video due to copyright. From the replies to tweets, doesn't appear like Larry Scott came across very well (to those who got to see the video).

John is going after these guys hard...love it.

 


Pac-12 loses 'staring contest' with DirecTV, leaving fans in the dark and limiting the conference's reach
Updated Nov 29, 11:52 AM; Posted Nov 29, 8:54 AM
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The lack of a Pac-12 Networks distribution deal with DirecTV left a large swath of Pac-12 fans unable to watch their teams on a consistent basis from home. (File Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)


SAN FRANCISCO --- Chip Kelly met with officials from the University of Florida in late November of last year. The Gators came to New Hampshire because they wanted Kelly to be their next football coach. Florida dangled $6 million a year in salary, fertile recruiting geography, and the promise to build Kelly a $65 million football-only training facility.

He turned them down.

Days later, UCLA landed Kelly to a five-year, $23.3 million contract. Seven months later, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott touted Kelly's hiring as evidence that his conference could stay competitive with Power Five Conference peers without economic parity.

"The Chip Kelly derby was one of the most watched national coaching searches," Scott said on conference football media day in Hollywood. "And he could have wound up in any league in the country if he wanted to. He wanted to be in the Pac-12, he wanted to be at UCLA, and they were able to pay competitively."

It was a stretch.

Kelly wanted to live on the West Coast.

The moment is reflective of Scott's leadership style. That he talked so flippantly about UCLA's ability to pay competitively raised eyebrows. The salary trend among Pac-12 Conference football coaches raises questions whether the commissioner and the Pac-12 CEO Group understand how it falls short of being competitive.

Kelly is the 40th-highest paid coach in college this football season. The Pac-12 Conference doesn't have a single head coach in the Top 15 in pay. Washington's Chris Petersen - No. 19 - makes $4.4 million a year. In front of the Huskies' coach: seven head coaches from the Big Ten, five from the SEC, four from the Big 12 and two more from the ACC.

Dave Bartoo, managing partner of Maxtrix Analytical Solutions, consults with dozens of universities engaged in coaching searches. He said that hiring typically boils down to which university offers the biggest number.

"Everything revolves around money," Bartoo said. "Other than lifestyle and personal preferences, who takes a pay cut of $3.5 million and 10-plus percent in income tax a year?

"Nobody but Chip Kelly."

It was about fit for Kelly. Also, Kelly was going to get paid either way. He was scheduled to earn $6.5 million this season from the 49ers, but his NFL contract had an offset against earnings from another coaching job. UCLA picked up $3.125 million of that. Next season, Kelly is due $7.7 million from the 49ers. The Bruins will pay only $3.75 million of that.

It's a fortunate development for UCLA. Because the Bruins aren't armed by the Pac-12's annual distribution to win a bidding war with an SEC or Big Ten program. Commissioner Scott may have acted like it on media day, but the conference athletic directors know better.

Said former Utah AD Chris Hill: "All the ADs are trying to save nickels and dimes. People may say, 'What are you talking about? You're paying your football coach $2 million a year.' Believe me, when your revenue isn't as high as others you have to take a look at spending."

Hill knows. He worked 31 years at Utah before retiring last spring.

The Pac-12 Conference distributes less revenue ($31 million each) annually to its members than other major college conferences. Far less than the SEC ($41 million) and Big Ten (soon to be in excess of $50 million). As a result, it makes sense that Pac-12 athletic directors would act with more fiscal responsibility than their peers when it comes to spending on coaches, facilities, nutrition, strength programs, recruiting, and assistant-coach pools. They're cash strapped.

A notable exception: Oregon.

Phil Knight's financial support and Nike's backing turned the Ducks into an outlier in a conference that was rapidly falling behind in major college football. Uniforms, facilities, and branding helped put the Ducks in the national championship game twice in the last decade. Having financial support and a visionary leader is a lethal combination in college athletics. But Kelly left for the NFL. His departure, and Oregon's subsequent falloff, was proof that money alone doesn't equate with winning.

Said one former Pac-12 AD: "There are lot of well-funded disasters. Think USC."

It was donor money that footed the buyout bill when Oregon parted ways with Kelly's successor, Mark Helfrich, just 20 months after it awarded him a five-year, $17.5 million contract extension. And donor money that continues now to help the Ducks try to keep up with Washington, Stanford and Washington State at the top of the North Division.

When the Ducks interviewed defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt for their head-coaching vacancy in favor of Mario Cristobal last winter, they had an advantage over some others. Oregon knew it could afford not to make Leavitt the head coach. Athletic director Rob Mullens liked Cristobal and gave him $2.5 million a year. And Mullens had the resources remaining to offer Leavitt a raise ($1.7 million annually) to stay on the job as an assistant.

UO made Leavitt the highest paid coordinator in the Pac-12. In fact, this season he'll make $200,000 more than Cal head coach Justin Wilcox. Oregon's athletic-department fundraising provides an edge. It's a luxury typically enjoyed only by programs from other major conferences.

LSU, for example, pays its defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, $2.5 million a year. Also, Clemson gave its defensive coordinator, Brent Venables, a raise last winter to $2.3 million annually. They both make more than four Pac-12 head coaches.

"The money is also very important because your average Pac-12 program has to travel more than its peers because the talent is spread out further," Bartoo, the consultant, said. "Now, you're going to Texas and Florida to recruit. I can't imagine what the recruiting budget is for Oregon and Washington and Oregon State and Washington State because they have to travel more.

"I don't know what they have to scrimp on to do that."

Oregon State, strapped with $40 million athletic-department debt and also searching for a football coach last November, hired Jonathan Smith.

His salary: $1.9 million a year.

The Beavers marketing department ramped up "The Return" campaign to trumpet Smith's arrival back on campus, where he'd once led the program to a Fiesta Bowl. In 2010, the Beavers season-ticket base was 24,908. This season it sold 15,393 season tickets. Hiring Smith was a smart, clear play on down-home, college-town loyalty. OSU hopes will result in fresh culture and renewed interest in the program.

The bottom line on OSU's hire certainly mattered. Smith is the 63rdhighest paid coach in the country. Only two Power Five Conference football coaches make less.

Right in front of Smith at No. 62 on the salary list is Arizona State first-year coach Herm Edwards ($2 million annually). That hire was a road-less-traveled move by the Sun Devils. Edwards hadn't coached in college in nearly 30 years, but went 7-5 in his first regular season. And one spot in front of Edwards on the pay rankings is Arizona's first-year coach Kevin Sumlin (No. 61), whose base pay is $1.6 million. Sumlin's contract at his last job, Texas A&M was worth $6 million a year.

Said Bartoo: "Different athletic directors have different piles of chips in front of them."

Those hires underscore the economic realities for Pac-12 Conference members. But they don't tell the complete picture. The San Francisco-based conference headquarters operates with little day-to-day oversight. Also, it enjoys the comfort of low expectations from the university presidents. It makes one wonder about the value university administration assigns to football.


---

Former Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti visited the spring football game at Auburn a couple of years ago and was blown away by the tailgate crowd.

"There were 67,000 fans there. Right down the road, same day, at Alabama there were 90,000," Bellotti said. "I've seen 77,000 at spring games at Florida. Those people, it's in their blood. It's ingrained.

"It's not that way in the Pac-12."

Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Alabama have all averaged more than 100,000 fans per home football game over the last five seasons. Texas A&M averaged 99,318. None of the Top 19 teams in the country in attendance over the last five seasons came from the Pac-12.

USC is No. 20, and sinking.

The Pac-12 Conference doesn't have a single 100,000-seat venue. The Rose Bowl (91,936) is the Pac-12's biggest, but eight of the 12 conference stadiums are smaller than 60,000 in capacity. The Pac-12 football programs averaged 49,601 fans per game last season. That put the conference fourth among the Power Five Conferences, and more than 25,000 fans per game behind the SEC (75,074).

"I don't think the Pac-12 fan understands recruiting like the SEC, Big Ten or the ACC," Bellotti said. "I don't think the fans in the Pac-12 make it a daily venture. It's one day a week for seven weekends a year. It's that way year-round in the SEC."

Who is primarily to blame?

It's long been a point of debate among Pac-12 Conference athletic directors, conference executives and university presidents. Because on one hand, the fans aren't as rabid and unhinged as some in other conferences. Football isn't embedded in the culture. That results in lower attendance figures, less demand for the product on television, and less enthusiasm for athletic department donations.

But the Pac-12 Conference plays a key role, too.

Late kickoff times, often after 10 p.m. on the East Coast have limited national visibility for the programs. That has created smaller geographical footprints for the members. Also, its deterred local fans away from buying season tickets, because kickoff times are sometimes announced as little as six days in front of the game.

Also, the lack of a Pac-12 Networks distribution deal with DirecTV left a large swath of Pac-12 fans unable to even watch their teams on a consistent basis from home. The television broadcasts of football games have been a discouraging endeavor. Also, the line of bowl-game alliances, Rose Bowl aside, are less attractive than other conferences.

Also, after this bowl season, Pac-12 football teams will have missed the College Football Playoff three times in five seasons.

Those things don't foster rabid enthusiasm.

The Pac-12 trumpets itself with the motto: "The Conference of Champions." It won more than twice the NCAA titles than its nearest competing conference last year. Those titles came in sports such as baseball, soccer, tennis, water polo and other Olympic sports, however.

In football, the Pac-12 is a non-factor nationally.

Said Scott on football media day: "I know there are some fans that maybe don't care about Oregon State winning the baseball College World Series or USC winning the women's track and field or how we do in softball. That's what our schools care about. But I understand fans and some in the media might only focus on football."

Buried in his missive was an important sentence: That's what our schools care about.

Scott wasn't talking about the schools, per se. He was talking specifically about the Pac-12 CEO Group, his bosses. And he was explicitly saying that the Pac-12 university presidents and chancellors -- people rooted in the academic world -- care very much about winning those non-revenue generating championships.

It explains why Scott still has a job.

Also, why Scott, who makes $4.8 million annually, went all-in on the conference-owned Pac-12 Network. It occupies 90,000 square feet of high-priced downtown San Francisco office space, and employs 170 full-time employees. The network signed on at one point to broadcast 850 annual events, mostly in those minor peripheral sports.

AT&T announced this week that its U-Verse service would no longer carry the Pac-12 Networks. It drops the total number of estimated households the network can reach to 17.5 million. The Big Ten Network, by comparison, reaches 60-plus million households. The SEC Network also reaches more than 60 million households, and is even available on the International Space Station.

Scott still sees a silver lining.

"We're the only conference in the country that, come 2024, is going to have all our rights back, complete control," Scott said at media day, "and we'll be able to adapt, react, and take advantage of this new world media order that's coming in a way others can't."

His message fell flat.

Between now and 2024, the Pac-12 Conference is projected to distribute $60 million to $80 million less to its members than the SEC and Big Ten.


---

The single most frustrating element of Larry Scott's tenure for some fans is the commissioner's failure to get the Pac-12 Networks on DirecTV. It's long been a source of frustration for Scott himself, who encounters questions about the carriage issue every season.

"I wish the results were different," Scott said. "I wish we had DirecTV. I don't know what we could have done differently. We went to them first, before Dish, before anybody else, and they weren't interested. We've had a lot of time to think about if there's anything we could have done to get them on board."

Insiders at the Pac-12 headquarters say Scott could have, and should have, got a distribution deal done with DirecTV. Scott locked up cable companies early. And then, he engaged DirecTV in a standoff that one high-ranking conference official called, "a staring contest."

Cable companies have always been willing to pay premium rates for sports content that viewers in their footprint care deeply about. Not everyone loves to watch the Pac-12, though. The advantage cable companies had was that they could turn on/off the programming, creating packages that worked for their subscribers. DirecTV could not at the time, and as a result it needed rates that wouldn't be costly to subscribers who were not interested in the Pac-12 Network.

Trouble is, discount provisions in the contracts Scott negotiated with the cable companies and Dish Network would kick in if he discounted the rates for DirecTV. Basically, he'd have to unwind the contracts and give money back.

Scott had a dilemma: He could either have eyeballs of millions of DirecTV households or he could hold the line on rates.

Said one conference executive: "The thinking was that Pac-12 fans would raise so much noise that DirecTV would eventually have to agree to a deal. I think Larry overestimated how rabid the Pac-12 fan would be about calling DirecTV to raise hell.

"SEC fans would have gone into DirecTV with molotov cocktails."

AT&T now owns DirecTV. It's in the content business and now it's not only refusing to cut a distribution deal with the Pac-12 Conference, it's removed the programming from U-Verse service.

"Those are key households in good areas," the source said. "They're just squeezing the Pac-12 Networks."


---

Former UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel knows the dirty little secret that Chip Kelly is up against in Westwood.

"The darlings of the Olympics," Neuheisel said.

It's not just that the Bruins receive less funding from its conference than peers at other Power Five Conferences. UCLA's football program is also in a fierce competition for support with the non-revenue producing sports on its own 419-acre campus.

It's a competition fueled by Scott's mission to create that Olympic-type content for the Pac-12 Networks.

UCLA had a $7.5 million agreement with Adidas while Neuheisel was the Bruins' coach. About $1 million of that came in the form of apparel and equipment. Neuheisel said only a fraction of the equipment allocation ever made its way to football.

"We didn't even have enough gloves for everyone on the team," he said. "We were asked to share with the rest of the athletic department. I couldn't go to my first and second-string players and give them gloves and then not give everyone else gloves.

"It sounds like a small thing, but all of a sudden my guys aren't getting what the players at Tennessee are getting. That matters to players. Relative to the other football programs and relative to pleasing the athletes who are your mouthpieces in recruiting, we were behind."

The University of Oregon's athletic department budget for the fiscal year 2017 included expenses in sports such as track and field ($4.5 million), softball ($1.6 million), acrobatics ($1 million), volleyball ($1.5 million), men's and women's golf ($1.5 million), women's lacrosse ($1.2 million), and a line other sports you might one day see on the Pac-12 Network.

The football program at Oregon, the biggest cash-printing machine on campus, operated at a $4 million profit. The athletic department financials are an example of one of the healthier models in the Pac-12 Conference. But it underscores the importance of gift-giving, largely driven by Phil and Penny Knight.

The Knights donated $30 million toward the Autzen Stadium expansion in 2002. They made another $41.7 million contribution toward and academic center for student athletes in 2010. And between 2011 and 2013 the Knights gave more than $168 million total to fund the construction of the Ducks cutting-edge football operations building and Matthew Knight Arena.

Oregon generated $27 million in athletic department gifts last fiscal year. Those donations drive football facility improvements, and investment in salaries, and also, help support sports programs such as track and field. Healthy subsidies from UO boosters help make that annual $30 million distribution from the Pac-12 Conference feel more like Big Ten or SEC money.

The Pac-12 has some fabulous academic institutions. It has some great college towns. Arizona State - 51,000 students at its main campus in Tempe - is top-five in the country in enrollment. But it's fair to ask whether the Pac-12 has a conference headquarters committed to helping fuel enthusiasm for its football programs.

The funding falls short. The television network has been a disappointment. The conference ADs are counting nickels and dimes.

There was an impressive throng of fans at that Auburn spring game.

Mike Bellotti's eyes didn't lie.

Coming Friday, PART FOUR: Closing the door on the Pac-12 headquarters.
 
Just a whole lot of words to say the Left Coast fans don't give a a hoot about football and nothing is going to change that. That Harvard boy is right....you must listen to him because he said so. Hoover and Thompson had more fans than the PAC 12 CG will have on Saturday.
 


Closing the door on the Pac-12 Conference headquarters: Is Larry Scott willing to make changes?
Updated 5:00 PM; Posted 8:49 AM
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Larry Scott, who came to the Pac-12 after running the Women's Tennis Association, is paid significantly more than his bosses. He also makes more than any of the Pac-12 Conference head football coaches. (File photo)


SAN FRANCISCO - Ken Lucida worked as an instant-replay official for the Pac-12 Conference and drew the assignment for the high-stakes 2013 game between then-No. 5 Stanford and No. 14 Washington.

Lucida and his communicator, Glen King, were in Palo Alto and the game was sailing along with the Cardinal ahead 31-28 late in the fourth quarter. Suddenly, on fourth-down and 10 on their final possession, Huskies quarterback Keith Price rolled right and threw a pass, low and apparently caught by a diving receiver Kevin Smith. It was ruled a completion and a first down on the field near the Cardinal sideline.

In the instant-replay booth at the stadium, Lucida wanted a closer look.

"I looked at the initial replay and couldn't see it," he said. "I asked for another angle. Then, another. I finally got the shot I needed, and I could see the tip of the ball hit the ground. It was incomplete.

"I overturned the call on the field."

Stanford took possession and won the game.

The following day, Lucida was at lunch with a friend when his cellular telephone rang. On the phone? Woodie Dixon, the Pac-12's general counsel, and Lucida said Dixon was upset and wanted to know why the replay official overturned the call.

"I told him it was in my game report," Lucida said. "I was 100 percent sure we got it right. Woodie had already called my partner (King) and he was now calling me. He shouldn't have even been talking to us. He should have been talking to Tony Corrente, the supervisor of officials."

Then-UW coach Steve Sarkisian was upset, and Huskies administrators and fans were, too. Dixon was fielding angry calls from Seattle. Lucida said he believes Dixon called him that day to express his own frustration with having to deal with the fallout after a controversial replay decision.

"There wasn't a lot of support from upper management," Lucida said.

The Pac-12 did not bring Lucida back for the 2014 season.

Just weeks into that season Corrente walked off the job, mid-year.

"Tony told me, 'Now you know what I deal with,'" said Lucida, who lives in the Bay Area and still works part-time in the NFL as an instant-replay assistant.

Corrente, still a full-time game official in the NFL, declined comment for this series. He is prohibited by his contract from granting an interview.

When asked if Dixon had interfered with other officiating decisions, a Pac-12 Conference spokesperson referred to a release sent out in October by the Pac-12 after its review of the Sept. 21 incident when Dixon overruled a targeting call during the USC-Washington State game.

"Woodie Dixon's call into the Conference's centralized replay center during the targeting call in question was a mistake and influenced the replay officials' decision," the statement said, "though it also found the influencing of a replay decision was an isolated incident."

Dixon's continued presence means the specter of that overturned call won't fade. He was working just a few feet away from the instant-replay command center as recently as a few weeks ago in downtown San Francisco.

Said Lucida: "I saw Woodie involved himself in that (Sept. 21) USC-Washington State game this season. I'm here to tell you, this isn't new. This goes way back. It's not current. Woodie Dixon has been involved in a lot of different ways.

"This kind of stuff went on constantly. I'm glad it went public, but I thought it would have happened sooner."

---

The Pac-12 Conference athletic directors have long wanted answers.

They've charted conference expenses. They've asked questions about revenue disappointments. They've even wondered why the Pac-12 is headquartered in downtown San Francisco.

At a meeting held in Las Vegas in 2014 between Pac-12 Conference commissioner Larry Scott and his athletic directors, Utah athletic director Chris Hill was asking questions, when several ADs who were in the room said the commissioner suddenly cut Hill off. Scott had a stern message for the ADs in the room who were dissatisfied.

Scott announced: "You're lucky for what you get."

The athletic directors in the room didn't feel very lucky.

In a four-part series that focuses on leadership of the Pac-12 Conference, The Oregonian/OregonLive documents lavish spending by the conference headquarters. That includes top-tier executive salaries, steep travel expenses, and more than 100,000 square footage of commercial real estate in the most expensive footprint in the country.

The series reveals how the culture at the conference headquarters affects the brand. It lays out the unfortunate steps that led to the troubling Dixon-involved instant-replay scandal that rocked the 2018 football season and eroded public trust. And the series reveals the power structure inside the Pac-12 CEO Group, which holds the keys to Scott's tenure.

It also compares the Pac-12 Conference's annual distributions to its members with those from other Power Five Conferences and demonstrates how that inequity has placed the conference football programs at a competitive disadvantage.

The Pac-12 Conference football programs will be shut out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight season and the third time in five years.

Not accidental say ADs, coaches and analysts.

Hill retired last spring after 31 years working for a university he still loves. In the wake of this series, he's publicly calling for an internal investigation into the conference's expenditures. It's a cry for help that Hill and other Pac-12's ADs tried on more than one occasion to make directly to Scott.

"When we have an expenditure or make a hire everybody knows it," Hill said. "If I can't defend it, I'm in trouble. If we had an extra half a million or million dollars to spend, I'd have to defend where I spent that."

A lack of transparency is a glaring issue for the conference.

When asked for financials of the conference, Andrew Walker, the vice president of communications for the Pac-12, refers reporters to the Pac-12's Form 990 tax filing. The Pac-12 is a tax-exempt organization and, by law, must report expenditures, assets and revenues annually. But a 10-month delay in filing and a limited scope of information on the document serve as a smoke screen.

Multiple conference athletic directors say they're frustrated. Scott does share the conference financials at his annual meetings on a PowerPoint presentation. But he doesn't issue handouts to the ADs, and doesn't leave the data on the screen long enough for them to do a thorough examination.

Its like a briefing featuring classified documents.

One former Pac-12 athletic director said of Scott: "He couldn't care less about the athletic directors. His allegiance is to the three big shots - Michael Crow (ASU), Ed Ray (Oregon State) and Gene Block (UCLA).

"The other ones either don't care or don't understand or there's a lot of transition on their campus so they aren't as engaged."

The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors make up the Pac-12 CEO Group. Crow, Ray and Block are the only three original university leaders who remain since Scott was hired in 2009. No matter how frustrated fans are, no matter how disenchanted ADs are, no matter how helpless the football coaches feel, the ultimate fate of the conference rests with them.

Do university leaders feel lucky for what they have?

Scott has brought vision to the conference headquarters. It operated as a "Mom and Pop" shop under former commissioner Tom Hansen. Scott engineered the formation of the Pac-12 Networks. He pushed for deeper relationships with technology companies. And he's positioned the Pac-12 for a potential payday in 2024 when its digital and broadcast rights are available for bid.

It raises a question: Would the Pac-12 ever sell its prized television network?

One executive-level insider believes it's the only path out of the woods for the conference. Giving up control of the network and selling to AT&T, Verizon, Facebook or Amazon might result in a Pac-12 payday that would level the playing field. Then again, control of the network has long been a point of pride for the conference. Could the university presidents and Scott ever look anyone in the eyes again if it gave up control?


---

The erosion of the Pac-12's brand -- and trust -- are at a breaking point.

Washington State athletic director Patrick Chun and head football coach Mike Leach were so troubled on Tuesday night when the College Football Playoff Rankings were released, they talked and decided to take matters into their own hands.

Chun and Leach gave an interview with USA Today in which they lobbied the playoff selection committee, pointing out that WSU is the only 10-win team coming from a Power Five Conference that isn't ranked in the top seven, among other facts. The move raised eyebrows among some because the playoff committee protocol is designed to funnel such pleas only through the conference offices.

It was telling that WSU didn't trust the Pac-12 alone to make its case.

The Cougars are the program most affected by the league's Sept. 21 instant-replay scandal. They lost that game to USC by three points. That conference general counsel Dixon interfered with the instant-replay process during that loss, and wasn't terminated on the spot, remains a topic of discussion on campus in Pullman, Washington.

"What happened that night is about to rear its ugly head," one current Pac-12 AD said.

The winner of the Pac-12 championship game between Utah and Washington will go to the Rose Bowl. But unless Washington State improves its ranking and slips into the Top 12 or higher in the final playoff rankings on Sunday night, the Pac-12 is going to have only one participant in the New Year's Six bowl games.

"We just kind of felt like we had enough and needed to speak out," Chun told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday. "We have 10 wins. We're in a league that requires nine conference games, that should have been for the benefit.

"Mike's done one of the best coaching jobs, start to finish. The manner in which we've won games, we've not been blown out. We had two close losses, and one of those led to a change in the instant-replay policy in the conference."

It was a public missive one might expect from a conference commissioner, scorching the earth and trying to get the attention of the committee. But it wasn't coming from Scott at the San Francisco headquarters. It was coming from the first-year athletic director and coach at WSU, and nobody who paid attention this season could blame them.

This four-part series has demonstrated that the Pac-12 badly needs to repair its football brand. The conference has a former Harvard tennis player (Scott) and a Harvard-educated lawyer (Dixon) in charge of football. Dixon was once the salary-cap manager for the Kansas City Chiefs but has no training in officiating or prior experience running football operations.

"It's absurd that nobody in charge of football knows much about football," one Pac-12 coach said.

The Pac-12 isn't respected. How else can you explain the selection committee ranking the 10-win Cougars so low? The series also revealed top-down pressure on the conference officials, including habitual, grinding input from Dixon, outlined in detail.

Chun and Leach spoke out. With the stakes so high, they weren't leaving the lobbying to chance. Does the Pac-12 protect certain programs more than others? The conference says it doesn't. And it would seem reasonable that the Pac-12 would want all its members to succeed and flourish.

But one former Pac-12 Conference executive said, "I think they're very concerned about football results. The perception is that it looks like they didn't want WSU to finish in the money."


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Mark Shuken is the head of the Pac-12 Networks. He has a sterling reputation and is known as a top-notch talent in his industry. His annual compensation package is unknown. His potential bonuses, also unknown. His travel expenses, unknown. But what's clear is that he works out of an office in San Francisco and also maintains a residence with his family in Southern California.

A question: Who pays for Shuken's travel to and from Los Angeles to the Bay Area? The Pac-12? Or Shuken?

When asked for Shuken's compensation package and travel expenses, Walker, head of communications for the Pac-12 Conference said: "Mark Shuken's compensation is reported and included in our Form 990s."

The Pac-12 Conference, required as a 501(c)3 to file annually, has not finalized its Form 990 for 2017-18. Shuken was hired after the fiscal year that ended in the summer of 2016. There's no data available.

Walker said upon a second request on the matter: "Our Form 990 will be made available to the public on the normal course of business timeframe, which is consistent with our peer conferences."

This really is the business of the Pac-12 CEO Group, isn't it?

Said Hill, the former Utah AD: "They're the only ones who can take a hard-core look at things and they're so busy and have so much on their plate, it's difficult for that group. The CEO Group is not going to look at nickels and dimes. What's $85 million to them in a $3 billion budget?

"But the AD group could do that."

To the AD group, saving every nickel and dime matters. It's the difference between hiring a better pool of assistants, funding strength and conditioning programs and making sure recruits have the amenities they like.

The Pac-12 Conference headquarters in downtown San Francisco cost the conference $6.9 million in rent a year. The conference commissioner makes double what his peers make and travels using a chartered jet. When some ADs hear about these things, they wonder if that money could be put to use trying to help the conference football programs keep pace with the SEC and Big Ten.

Rick Neuheisel, former football coach in the conference, said the competitive disadvantage is noticeable when he watched last year's bowl games. He doesn't think Scott is dumb. In fact, Neuheisel calls Scott "brilliant" but also points out that changes in the commissioner's management style are needed to go along with improved financial distributions and better television exposure.

"The late time slots the Pac-12 is playing in, if you live on the East Coast you have to commit to watching a game," Neuheisel said. "You have to put on a pot of coffee and want to hunker down. Who knows how much that costs a guy like Christian McCaffrey and Gardner Minshew?

"That might cost them a Heisman."

Washington and Utah will suit up for the Pac-12 Championship game today at Levi's Stadium. They're seemingly the best the conference has, but the demand for tickets should serve as evidence of a larger issue.

A pair of tickets for the Washington-Utah title game: $28.

Two tickets to the SEC title game: $540.

Is Scott willing to do a deep examination and make changes? Is he willing to extend the notion of transparency beyond the CEO Group to his ADs and the public? Can the leader of the Pac-12 effectively reconnect himself to the core mission of the conference - promoting its members? Or is a six-year downward slide of the Pac-12 inevitable due to simple finances?

Those are questions only Scott and his bosses can answer now.
 
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