Despite a wobbly winter and mediocre March, Pac-12 basketball emerged from the 2021-22 season stronger internally and more relevant nationally than it has been in years.
Why? UCLA and Arizona.
More specifically: Mick Cronin and Tommy Lloyd.
For the first time since the middle of the 2000s, when Ben Howland and Lute Olson were in command, the Pac-12’s premier basketball programs can claim first-rate leadership at the same time.
“Tommy Lloyd and Mick Cronin will be in the national conversation until they go somewhere else,” Pac-12 Networks analyst Don MacLean said. “And the Pac-12 has a lot more street cred when the bellwether schools are good.”
The Bruins and Wildcats are responsible for the Pac-12’s only two national championships since the conference expanded in the late 1970s.
They own six of the league’s eight Final Four appearances in the past quarter century.
They are the needle-movers, the headline-grabber, the seat-fillers — the lone basketball blue bloods in a conference that has leaned football since time immemorial.
“For basketball to be good in our league, it’s imperative that UCLA and Arizona be good — they are the brand names,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle told the Hotline. “It can only help.”
Success in Tucson and Westwood impacts the conference in ways that are both nuanced and obvious, and there is a clear compounding effect when both are ascendant.
“In a normal year,” Boyle continued, “we would play UCLA twice and Arizona twice. That’s four opportunities for quality wins.
“And guess what: If Colorado gets beat, it was supposed to happen. But if we beat them — it’s all upside and no downside. There is no downside.”
Other benefits aren’t easily quantified but are no less significant.
UCLA has been elite for 60 years, Arizona for 40. Their names resonate with generations of basketball fans and the TV talking heads from coast to coast. That narrative foothold is critical in the vast regions of the country where the Pac-12 Networks aren’t available.
“There’s an East Coast bias, but everybody knows Arizona and UCLA have been good for a long time,’’ said MacLean, the former UCLA forward and the Pac-12’s career scoring leader.
“People perk their ears up and think, ‘Oh, if they’re good, the Pac-12 must be good.’ It helps offset that bias. But when those schools aren’t in the national conversation, I think sometimes people write the conference off.”
With their tradition, resources, recruiting prowess and rich NBA pipelines, UCLA and Arizona are best positioned to compile the talent needed for success at the highest level, to fill arenas at home and on the road, to drive TV ratings, to keep West Coast recruits at home.
They are the only Pac-12 schools to win NCAA titles in the past 60 years and earn multiple Final Four berths in the past 50.
Mick Cronin has brought stability — and success — to UCLA, something not seen in Westwood since the early days of Ben Howland.
Other programs can win at an elite level — Oregon was in the Final Four a few years ago — but Arizona and UCLA are built to win in ways their peers are not, just as USC has inherent advantages on the football side.
In both sports, past success is the best predictor of future success.
Cronin took UCLA to the Final Four in his second year and the Sweet 16 in his third.
Lloyd just won the conference title as a rookie head coach (and is collecting national Coach of the Year awards).
As long as they stick around, the programs should thrive.
“People always ask which is better: Having a really deep conference or being strong at the top? The reality is, both are important,” said Pac-12 Networks analyst Matt Muehlebach, who played for Arizona under Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson.
“But it’s also important to be able to sustain success. And history has shown that UCLA and Arizona can do that.”
Two hires, two years apart — and both viewed with a morsel of skepticism — have transformed the outlook for the conference, regardless of the results of the past five months.
Pac-12 leaving San Francisco; employees to work remotely
The Pac-12 on Tuesday announced it’s leaving downtown San Francisco next year when the lease expires.
Where’s the new headquarters? Nowhere. There will be no conference office in the traditional sense, only a facility for content production.
Most employees will be allowed to work in fully-remote fashion, a move that will save millions in rent annually and generate additional revenue for the campuses.
According to a news release, the decision is “designed to provide Pac-12 staff with the benefits of work flexibility while also envisioning regular opportunities for employees to come together in person within the Pac-12 geographic footprint, including at Pac-12 campuses to foster greater collaboration with member universities.”
The basics are as follows:
Any employee whose job isn’t tied to a production facility can work remotely on a full-time basis, so long as they are based in the Mountain or Pacific times zones.
Meanwhile, a small production facility will be established in a yet-to-be-determined location. The Bay Area is an option, but not San Francisco proper.
The move will take place by next summer, when the current lease on Third Street expires.
The conference paid approximately $8 million in occupancy for the San Francisco office space in the 2020 fiscal year, according to the most-recent financial documents available.
An undetermined fraction of that amount will support the production facility, with the remainder distributed to the schools — perhaps $500,000 to $750,000 per campus per year.
“The Pac-12 is committed to best supporting our employees by providing a work environment that accommodates today’s modern world and gives our employees maximum flexibility to live and work where they want, while still fostering collaboration among staff and our valued member institutions,” commissioner George Kliavkoff said in a news release. “We are also committed to ongoing best-in-class production of Pac-12 events. We are excited for what this new remote and flexible work environment can do to support our employees, and for the new ways it will allow for us to reinvest in our member universities so that they can best support student-athletes.”
Kliavkoff’s statement is revealing in that it suggests the conference will remain in the media business — “ongoing best-in-class production of Pac-12 events” — beyond the expiration of the lease.
In other words, the Pac-12 Networks arm is not being shut down.
