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David Marsh

News Flash: Bye Bye Larry Scott!

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Larry Scott is out as Pac-12 Commissioner! 

The search is on! 

 

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I cannot convey my joy...

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Mr. FishDuck

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My comment.

This has no connection to who my first Duck QB was, though.

 

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Happy Joy GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

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I think SpongeBob and Patrick would do a better job of marketing!

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The hire is going to have to be someone who really understands football...

Also wouldn't hurt if they don't have ambitions of being a tv network producer. 

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Great news. The upcoming TV rights negotiations could not have been handled by Larry Scott. He had a chance to re-make the college football landscape, but let Texas slip through his fingers. After that it was all downhill. Bad business decisions compounding bad competitive decisions. 

Good news: The Pac-12 supposedly has built up some equity with the Pac-12 Network. At worst they can sell all the rights, instead of the current set up. CBS and the SEC are parting ways, it’s an opportunity. 
Bad news: This isn’t the TV landscape of 2010 with all the cord cutting. This also isn’t the same Pac-10/12 that it used to be. 

Next: Hire an experienced conference commissioner. Not the head of the world badminton association or something. Failing that, an experienced AD. Which may very well be Rob Mullens, although he has millions in bonus money coming if he stays at U of O. 

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5 hours ago, David Marsh said:

The hire is going to have to be someone who really understands football...

Also wouldn't hurt if they don't have ambitions of bring a tv network producer. 

The new hire will also have to accept being paid less then an excess of $5,000,000 per year (+ expenses) in compensation. - - - - - Such a downer. 

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Hoping the new commissoner puts the Pac 12 on the right financial track.

 

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Still not leaving soon enough. One has to question why he was retained so long and if the decision making will now be any better.

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1 hour ago, TheRunningDuck said:

Still not leaving soon enough. One has to question why he was retained so long and if the decision making will now be any better.

It is a mystery how he stayed this long but now there is only 1 president remaining that was part of the group that hired him. Also for some strange reason Arizona State president likes him and has spoken out in favor of him in the past. Maybe with all his income he had a kickback program going, (that's just a rumor of course)

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First order of business:  Find cheaper office space.

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More of the details from Jon Canzano:

Don’t be fooled -- Scott didn’t leave this conference any better than he found it. It’s not nationally competitive in key revenue-generating sports. The brand is in pieces. The media rights contracts have been lapped by peers.

Scott built the Pac-12 Network, but gutted it when it served him to do so. He trampled a lot of people. In the end, the outgoing commissioner will be best remembered as the guy who laid off dozens of his staff and handed out furloughs to others while accelerating his own annual bonus.

Some details:
-- $5.3 million in salary.
-- Chartered jets and lavish hotel suites.
-- A $1.9 million interest-free loan that, far as anyone knows, Scott still hasn’t made a single payment on.

Look. Understand. The proud roots of the Pac-12 go back to 1915, where it was founded in The Imperial Hotel in downtown Portland. It operated for years in humble office space in Walnut Creek, Calif. That is, right up until Scott ordered his one-time lieutenant Gary Stevenson to secure a $7 million a year lease, gobbling up prime commercial real estate in downtown San Francisco.

To a lot of you, this conference has always been like extended family. To Larry Scott, the conference was the Bank of Pac-12.

Minutes after the news broke, I reached out via text message to a long-time trusted Pac-12 staff member to ask, “What do I need to know?” The reply came: “He’s a (expletive).”
The point here isn’t to pile on Scott, but to make sure the sitting presidents and chancellors don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Scott struggled mightily to connect with his own staff. He barely spoke to most of them beyond what was necessary. He ruled like an emperor, and cast aside anyone who couldn’t help him. But Scott’s biggest sin is that he forgot somewhere along the line that his job was supposed to be about doing everything in his power to boost the conference and serve those 12 campuses.

The next commissioner has to be someone with ties to the campuses. It has to be someone who understands the struggles of coaches and athletic directors. I think the CEO Group would be wise to interview a couple of sitting athletic directors in the coming weeks. You can outsource the media rights negotiations to an agency, but what the Pac-12 can never again do is lose connection with its campuses.

Also, it has to stop the charade.

It’s not a media company, as Scott famously claimed. Athletes, coaches, alumni and athletic directors are the lifeblood of any conference. Without them, you’ve got no pulse. Whoever sits at the big desk at Pac-12 headquarters has to be interested in more than a meet-and-greet fly-by on game day, whisking out of town at halftime leaving a trail of jet fumes.

Wednesday was a long-overdue reboot. Scott said in the release, “now is a great time in my life to pursue other exciting opportunities.”

He had to know months ago that he was in trouble. We could all see this coming. The timing of the typical contract-extension negotiations didn’t unfold for him as expected. The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors who ousted Scott this week aren’t the same ones who hired him a decade ago. Only two of them were around when Scott arrived: Gene Block at UCLA and Michael Crow at ASU.

Best case, Scott had to know he was facing a 10-2 deficit in the vote.

I don’t blame you for being excited about the possibilities. With the right leadership, this conference has a chance to turn the corner and make up ground on it peers. Larry Scott is now lame-duck commissioner. He’ll leave the post in June, one year before the expiration of his contract.

What this conference needs to focus on now is the person takes his seat. It must be a massive course correction. One with deep connection with the university members and some fresh vision. The Pac-12 will get a new boss this summer

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35 minutes ago, BigDucksFan said:

What this conference needs to focus on now is the person takes his seat. It must be a massive course correction. One with deep connection with the university members and some fresh vision. The Pac-12 will get a new boss this summer

TV deals need to be renegotiated as well as the contracts end in 2024... whoever they get has an incredible opportunity to lift the PAC up.

Great info BDF, thanks!

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