It sounds like the natives are getting a wee bit restless.
The Pac-12 was roiling when its athletic directors gathered in Santa Clara in late October for their fall meeting with conference executives.
The officiating scandal, in which an untrained administrator interfered with the instant-replay process, was threatening to swallow the season, and the athletic directors were livid.
Years of quiet frustration came tumbling into the open, directed at commissioner Larry Scott and his staff.
Frustration with unmet revenue projections, frustration with the sagging Pac-12 Networks, with misguided messaging and exorbitant spending and, above all, frustration with their lack of influence in setting conference policy and direction — with feeling like second-class citizens in their own conference.
The ADs were irate, the culture was busted, and the semi-annual, state-of-the-conference meeting turned intense.
“It got pretty heated,’’ one source said. “There was acrimony because of how the schools felt they had been treated. It had reached the boiling point with the officiating.”
The immediate priority, however, was getting control of the instant-replay crisis. And that required buy-in from the athletic directors.
When the meetings adjourned, the Pac-12 issued a news release trumpeting the recommendations from an internal review of its instant-replay procedures.
The announcement was accompanied by an endorsement from the athletic directors, who expressed “confidence in the integrity of our process and the personnel charged with monitoring the process.”
The personnel charged with monitoring the process.
“If you noticed,” another source said, “there was no endorsement of conference leadership.”
If you didn’t notice, they made sure you noticed. And here’s a real vote of confidence from Colorado’s AD chancellor.
Asked for his views on conference leadership, DiStefano said:
“(Scott) still has a contract with us. He’s the commissioner, and we’re working on things together. That’s something we’ll take up at another time.
Translation: of all the Pac-12 commissioners he knows, Larry Scott is definitely one of them.
Scott’s ridiculous contract still has another three years to run, so he’s got plenty of time to keep being Larry Scott. As long as they keep stroking the checks, he can put up with a little AD irritation.
Get The Picture 
Small correction: DiStefano is the Chancellor and Rick George is the AD at Colorado.
It wouldn’t surprise me if DeStefano has his eyes on Larry’s job.
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Going too fast for my own good there. Thanks for catching.
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I cannot imagine a world where P12 boosters are not raging to school ADs and chancellors. And where P12 chancellors and ADs are not blaming everything going wrong at their school largely on conference leadership.
Maybe they’ll raid Sankey. One can hope.
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On the subject of “raiding,” I wonder if the growing discontent with Scott is leaving any Pac-12 schools more vulnerable to being poached by another conference. Granted, there aren’t many conferences that would make geographic sense for such a jump, but West Virginia to the B12 didn’t make much sense at the time, either. And what if the B12 decided it wanted to bulk up to achieve parity with the SEC, B1G, et cetera—would Utah, Colorado, and the Arizona schools be attracted by such an overture?
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How do we know the SEC doesn’t have the same kind of replay problem? A call is made, the game stops, and somefaceless guy in B’ham gets on the phone with the local TV ref and tells him what to do. I’ve been surprised and upset with a lot of replay decisions, haven’t you? The money covers up a lot of ills—and questions.
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Maybe Larry Scott’s parents cheated to get him in Harvard?
The question is, how many dozens, hundreds, or thousands got enrolled at those top universities before this ‘Adminisions-gate’ batch of 500 or so got caught?
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Over the history of college education in the US we’re talking thousands and quite possibly tens of thousands. Maybe even hundreds of thousands. We’ll never know. I am very suspicious about several of our national leaders: W, the Donald, some Supremes. I’ve always thought that there was something funny about how Obama was the starting shooting guard and leading three point shooter at Occidental College one day and attending Columbia the next– and completely out of basketball. Plus you can’t get any of his grades. Something happened. (I love a good conspiracy theory. 🙂 )
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