In one of the more thoroughly reported and devastating takedowns of conference leadership we've ever seen, this week Oregonian columnist John Canzano took a knife to Larry Scott's conference and methodically went to work slicing and dicing. The result is a well filleted corpse, shedding some light into the belly of the Pac-12 conference.
The entire series was well reported; but if you only catch this closing piece you'll know enough. Pac-12 leadership has a lot of questions to answer; and it isn't hard to envision sweeping changes coming at the top of the conference.
In Canzano's summary piece, former Utah athletic director Chris Hill, who spent 31 years with the University, is "publicly calling for an internal investigation into the conference's expenditures." Can you imagine an athletics director for a major public university feeling the need to call for an investigation into his own conference's finances? Action needs to be taken.
Canzano reports that Larry Scott does not provide the institutions or their leadership with financial information, other than talking them through a powerpoint style presentation, "But he doesn't issue handouts to the ADs, and doesn't leave the data on the screen long enough for them to do a thorough examination." For its part, the Pac-12 notes that their IRS form 990s are publicly available. For those unfamiliar with Form 990, it is a high level summary of assets, liabilities and income & expenses. Few, if any details are included, with expenditures often lumped into large homogenous categories. Only certain individual's compensation is listed and even then it is often hard to parse that information as details of how and why aren't included.
Canzano did the dirty work, now its time for member leadership to demand answers & accountability.
Canzano's full work on the subject is below:
Part 1: How Larry Scott and the Pac-12 continue to lose ground in the college football arms race
Part 2: A look inside the beleaguered Pac-12 instant-replay command center, where Woodie Dixon is still a central figure
Part 3: Pac-12 loses 'staring contest' with DirecTV, leaving fans in the dark and limiting the conference's reach
Part 4: Closing the door on the Pac-12 Conference headquarters: Is Larry Scott willing to make changes?