Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff spent much of his media day opening remarks Friday bemoaning the profiteering and professionalism of college athletics — yes, yes, bless his heart.
He talked about being “disappointed” that USC and UCLA are leaving for the Big Ten “after a century of tradition and rivalries.” He said that college sports have “collectively lost sight of the student-athlete.”
He pleaded for the industry to “recalibrate” because “our long-term measure … can’t be how much money we can consolidate … we should be measuring how many lives we can change.”
Then he mentioned that the Pac-12 was actively looking to expand and took a shot at a previous Big 12 comment about being “open for business.”
“We appreciate that,” Kliavkoff said. “We have not decided whether we’re going shopping there or not.”
In other words, which schools are the Pac-12 going to raid from the Big 12. (If any are even willing, which, of course, we’ll get to later).
Kliavkoff noted that was an aggressive line, but said he had no choice.
“I’ve been spending four weeks trying to defend against grenades that have been lobbed in from every corner of the Big 12 trying to destabilize our remaining conference,” Kliavkoff said. “When you look at the relative media value between the conferences, I get why they’re scared.”
This is modern college sports in a nutshell, a whipsaw back and forth from sepia-toned ideals and modern cutthroat capitalism. The people who run college sports — mostly football — can’t figure out what they want to be … other than well-compensated, of course.
Kliavkoff was bemoaning predatory conferences while threatening to be a predatory conference. And if he thinks it’s dishonorable or disloyal for USC and UCLA to jump from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, then doesn’t all that also apply to the Pac-12 getting anyone to jump from the Big 12 or Mountain West?
Words are words. Media rights are media rights.
“Sometimes you just have to punch back,” Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens told reporters.
Indeed. And the Pac-12 needs to do plenty of punching if it wants to survive. It’s why Kliavkoff should scrap the hearts and flowers approach to describing college athletics.
This is a battle for money and only money.
“We are…