My two cents: Pac-12 bowing to television, though revenues fall short of expectations
It’s with ironic timing that Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott will attend Tuesday’s UA-ASU baseball game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
Scott will be in Tempe as part of a 12-campus listening tour with Pac-12 students on the topic of time demands and possible NCAA proposals about student-athlete welfare.
Twenty years ago, 1996, Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea’s NCAA championship team played 27 doubleheaders.
That was routine until the league expanded to 12 teams and the Pac-12 Networks was created. Now teams don’t play conference doubleheaders, which minimized missed class time.
Instead, a typical weekend of Pac-12 softball is the one Arizona endured last week in Seattle. It played at Washington on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. It left Tucson on Friday and returned on Tuesday. Missed class time and travel expenses increased notably.
Former Oregon State athletic director Bob De Carolis told Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano the league was willing to take on the schedule in exchange for a stockpile of Pac-12 Networks money.
“The ADs and the coaches all wanted more exposure for all the Olympic sports,” De Carolis said last week. “So that’s why you’re playing games at all hours of the day, but that’s also why there was an opportunity, hopefully, to get revenue to go against that. That just hasn’t happened. I think that’s the frustration.
“It would be one thing about student-athlete welfare, playing different times of the day, traveling. But you’re doing all that but you’re not realizing the revenues.”
Most league members expected about $5 million each from annual Pac-12 Networks revenue. Last year it was $1.1 million.
The players and coaches pick up the rest of the tab.
