Larry Scott’s time as Pac-12 commissioner is coming to a merciful end next month. Under his leadership, the conference has suffered through an era of irrelevance on the national college football stage, a failed media experiment and unnecessary corporate headquarter movement. Instead of leaving his position with quiet “grace”, Scott sat down to speak with the Associated Press about the future of the conference under George Kliavkoff.
Needless to say, it did not go well.
Take this exchange with writer Ralph Russo for example:
Q: The flip side of that is where do you see failures or goals left unaccomplished?”
Scott: The biggest regret is that we didn't have teams performing better in football during our 11 years. Certainly, we’ve got some brands that traditionally would be making the College Football Playoff and competing for a national championship. It didn’t happen. For a variety of reasons. Thankfully, it has happened in our other sports where we won more championships than any other conference every year, including what was the best overall conference in basketball, men’s and women’s, this year. But competitively, teams not reaching their traditional potential was a real regret.
This kind of deflection from the very obvious issues plaguing Pac-12 football (money and exposure) reminds many of Trail Blazers’ general manager Neil Olshey’s famous press conferences. Instead of taking responsibility for problem, Scott deflects to brag about what he did right.
We’ll just conclude on this other gem from the interview:
“If I could hit the rewind, it would have been shorter TV deals if I had a crystal ball and knew the short-term pressures and the reactions people would have to the SEC and Big Ten redoing their deals a few years before us.”
