PAC-12 COMMISH:
GET USED TO THE LATE STARTS
Larry Scott said in Pullman Thursday that late starts
are here to stay as part of the huge TV deal that also includes the chance to
make non-revenue sports attractive to recruits.
Zack Menchel, Murrow News Service
PULLMAN –If TV watchers and ticket-buyers are
increasingly irritated with the late starts for Pac-12 Conference football
games . . . well, too bad.
“They’re a fundamental part of our new TV agreement and
of high value to our broadcast partners,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott
told WSU students, faculty and alumni in the CUB Auditorium Thursday night
before the Cougars game against Arizona State. Scott’s campus session touched
on a number of sports topics:
Pac-12 Networka not just football
Scott spoke with pride regarding his role in the
development of the Pac-12 Networks and its importance in expanding the
conference’s reach. Recently, the late start times have drawn the ire of
University of Washington athletics director Scott Woodward and a growing number
of fans.
With the creation of the Pac-12 Networks, Scott said one
of the main goals was to garner more exposure for the Olympic sports — not just
high-revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.
“Part of the DNA of our conference has been broad-based
excellence in athletics because in addition to the academic prestige of our
universities, we have won more NCAA titles than any other conference,” said
Scott. “We’re really prolific when it comes to the Olympic sports and we wanted
this to be seen.“
Scott said 750 live sports events are slated for
broadcast this year, 250 more than the launch in 2011. While football and
basketball still comprise the lion’s share of the telecasts, there is an
increasing desire to continue to find air time for Olympic sports more evenly.
“These sports and the student-athletes are traditionally
well known in the country for what they do, but haven’t been able to get the
same coverage that other sports have gotten,” he said.
“What I think this does for the future is help position
the conference extraordinarily well in terms of our ability to recruit top
student-athletes for a multitude of reasons, which now include knowing their
family and friends will have a chance to see them on TV.”
Scott said he and his team realized that the Pac-12
needed to be more competitive nationally and give alumni and fans a chance to
follow teams and players in a new way.
“The benefits of the media agreement are really
multi-faceted,” he said. “The money that comes in gets the most media
attention, but as I travel to our campuses every week and witness the support
for all these athletic programs as well as the student athletes who have
arrived thanks to the influx of money, it’s very gratifying.”
Equal revenue sharing
Scott cited revenue sharing as the most critical factor
to the success of the Pac-12.
“I came to the conference with a belief that all
successful leagues must have healthy, competitive teams from top to bottom,” he
said. “That is the hallmark of a successful conference.”
Before his arrival, the money generated from football
and basketball would not be shared evenly among the schools, but split between
the participating schools.
“The programs from the larger markets such as our two
Los Angeles schools were teams that would get significantly more money than
smaller media markets who were televised less,” he said. “This created
significant disparity with unequal revenue and it wasn’t helped by the
conference not selling all the TV rates.”
That circumstance helped give rise in 2011 to the
12-year, $3.4 billion television contract with ESPN and Fox, distributed evenly
across the conference.
“Our revenue streams increased dramatically, and knowing
that revenue would be shared equally created an uplift for the smaller schools
to grow on the same level,” he said. “It’s really hard to overstate the impact.
I get excited to see where we’ll be five years in the future now that the
national media has noticed our depth.”
Head trauma
Scott was asked to detail the Pac-12’s plan to mitigate
the issues of head trauma and concussions, specifically in football.
He said that the board of directors was tasked to decide
if the issue was best left to the institutions or if there was reason for the
conference to help.
The conference is now engaged.
“We are in the business of building brains, not just in
terms of intelligence but also the health and well-being of all students,” said
Scott. “When student athletes are facing risk factors and physical threats to
that well-being, we as a conference decided that we had to get engaged.”
Scott is creating a head-trauma task force and steering
committee aimed to coordinate research initiatives. The conference is
committing $3.5 million next year to the project.
“We will work to identify and track head trauma more
efficiently,” said Scott. “We want to figure out if there are necessary rule
changes or further protective measures in order to create a safer
intercollegiate athletic environment.”
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