Larry Scott is good at getting himself in front of the cameras as the face of the new PAC-12 conference, but so far he has overpromised and underdelivered as PAC-12 commissioner.
The new division alignment stinks, and it's full of poorly-negotiated concessions to UCLA and USC, the new conference members Utah and Colorado, and the Bay Area teams Stanford and California.
Everybody got a piece of the pie, but the Northwest got a tiny slice, and a promise he'd bake cookies tomorrow. The new TV deal, it's hinted, will make everything right.
We'll see. If it's handled anything like expansion or realignment, it won't do the Northwest schools any favors.
No doubt Scott will be in Eugene tonight, interviewed on TV in the third quarter, pontificating importantly in a $400 rain jacket and a $1000 suit, about how this is a great deal for the conference as a whole and the individual members will all profit from the elevated profile and international marketing of the conference. The same bullet points he covered promoting the WTA back in the day. Scott got Serena Williams and the rest $88 million from Sony-Ericcson a few years ago, but no one is writing checks like that right now.
He's got more flash and dash than Tom Hansen, and he's been decisive in his first year on the job, but Northwest fans have to be concerned. They were marginalized in this deal. They were victimized, shut out, relegated, ghettoized. In one round of negotiations (negotiation isn't quite what went on here--in a negotiation you give something and I give something we meet in the middle) the proud longtime members of the Pac-8 have been reduced to the Big-12 North.
Now that it's happened Chip Kelly and the Oregon Ducks have to overcome this on the field. Anybody want to bet that they will? Kelly is recruiting nationally, and they've reached the place where they can stand on their body of work. Kids all over the country want to play for the Ducks. Three of their current stars come from Texas, two of their top recruits, redshirting right now, come from the Lone Star state as well. The Ducks have a high profile game against LSU in Dallas next fall, and a potential trip to a BCS bowl this January, maybe the top one.
The Ducks will create their own opportunities. Tuscaloosa and Norman aren't exactly urban population centers, but excellence, commitment and tradition find a way. What Oregon has built, no bad deal is going to undo or derail.
And the next time a deal is negotiated, maybe Oregon can dictate the terms.
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