Shocking … shocking, I tell you, is the news out of the Pac-12, what’s left of it.
The blow-your-mind release reads/read as follows in two sentences: “The Pac-12 Board of Directors announced today that the Conference (note the capital “C”) and George Kliavkoff have mutually agreed to part ways, effective February 29, 2024. More details about new leadership of the Pac-12 will be announced next week.”
That’s the new news that isn’t new at all. Mr. Magoo could have seen that coming, could have written that release himself months ago.
And there’s no real joy in it. Just a kind of rueful look back at what was and at what might have been. That sad-and-sorry glance reiterates more than it reveals that the demise of the Conference (capital “C” again because arrogance dies a lot harder than the league itself) wasn’t all Kliavkoff’s fault. There’s a boatload of blame to pass around, even as the ghost of Larry Scott haunts the remains still. The presidents, past and present, can share in the condemnation they earned. Scott may have been good to and for Utah, having added the Utes to the group, but so much of the rest was good for nobody else.
We’ve been through all this before.
But I remember with exactness asking Scott about the deteriorating condition of the league a number of years ago. And he acted as though I and a handful of others, too, were asking him about the Sun Belt Conference, not his precious realm, the Conference of Champions — champions of everything but what mattered most: football.
That little detail was messed up and messed over, like a smattering of other issues, not the least of which was a network that was a bad idea from the beginning, a network that had some talented folks involved with it, but that struggled to get proper distribution and, more importantly, that did not shout when it came time to hand out cash to its schools, it whimpered. And that combo-pack of details put the Pac-12 at a huge disadvantage when it came to competing against other Power 5 conferences, which were reaping way more exposure and way more money, the lifeblood of college football.
I apologize. You know all of this.
When the league ridded itself of Scott, Kliavkoff blew through the door wielding all kinds of hope. He acknowledged out in the open what the Pac-12′s biggest problem was, as he called it, the league’s “greatest weakness.”
He could have said “leadership” and been correct, but he was equally on the mark with what he said instead: Yeah, you-know-what.
Mike Schill, the head of the Pac-12′s commissioner search committee, said on that same occasion that Kliavkoff had precisely what the league was so desperately in need of, namely, “the ability to see where the hockey puck is going to go. He will lead the Conference of Champions (here we go again) to a great future.”
It was more like the Great Depression (we’ll capitalize that).
Kliavkoff, the former collegiate rower, from that moment forward was up a creek without a paddle.
“Success in football is really important to the Pac-12,” he said, adding that “everything is up for review.”
He implied that he would “fix” football, and that the network screwup would be remedied.
Um. Whew.
USC and UCLA helped not one iota with that, both with their less-than-stellar performance on the field, compared to what other marquee programs in other leagues did, and especially via their kick-to-the-onions exit for the Big Ten.
Still, the Pac-Whatever could yet have been saved by way of the very talent that Schill complimented Kliavkoff as having in abundance, as a “forward thinker.”
Granted, keeping the thing together would have been complicated and when too many of the other members saw more complication than vision and the money that typically comes with that foresight, the Pac-12 disintegrated.
Sorry again. You are well aware of that.
What will George Kliavkoff be remembered for when he departs what he once called the “best job in sports” on Leap Day of a leap year?
Leapin’ lizards. Don’t ask.
This much is fact: He couldn’t clean up the mess and he couldn’t save the mess once it got messier.
For him and his sake, hopefully he’ll walk out for a better job that he’s better at, a job that requires less heavy lifting, less visual perception, less creative power, less need to see through all the Clutter (with a capital “C”) exactly where the hockey puck is going to go.
