"Lack of leadership": CFB analyst explains how the Pac-12’s poor decisions led to the exodus of USC, UCLA and others

The fact that the Pac-12 finds itself in the midst of this turmoil as a result of poor leadership decisions cannot be overemphasized. The conference's inability to tackle situations the right way led to the mass exodus of its members and posed an existential threat to them.

College football analyst Joel Klatt analyzed why the Pac-12 ended up in chaos in a recent episode of "Breaking the Huddle." The former Colorado quarterback explained that a host of poor decisions by the conference over the last decade led it into the current turmoil.

“They made several decisions over the course of the last 10 and 12 years that led to their own demise. So that lack of leadership in the conference ended up materializing into what we've seen over the course of the last two off-seasons”.

The Pac-12 couldn't secure its members enough revenue

The inability to secure its members enough money for conference distribution started the chaos. Joel Klatt cited the poor decision made on the Pac-12 Network, which included not selling it to ESPN when they had the opportunity, leading to lesser revenue and exposure for its members.

“If you look at what happened over the last decade, you'll see that the Pac-12 made a poor decision with their own network. A lot of people have talked about this, where they didn't get the distribution that they needed. And because of that, the value and the revenue distribution were not there per school.”

Joel Klatt pointed out that the fact that Oklahoma and Texas realigned to the Southeastern Conference spurred USC to embark on the move to leave the Pac-12. The Trojans basically realized they needed to move conferences in order to maintain their competitiveness.

“When OU and Texas went to the SEC, then teams like USC—they looked at the landscape and they thought to themselves, ‘How are we going to compete at the top end unless we're in a conference which is going to afford us the same type of distribution that those schools are getting?’ So they felt like they had to go to the Big Ten.”

Following the exit of USC and UCLA, the conference has struggled to secure a lucrative media deal, eventually resulting in a mass exodus of its members. The conference also made a poor decision by rejecting an earlier deal offered by ESPN, which the Big 12 took advantage of.

Overall, a number of poor decisions under the leadership of Larry Scott and George Kliavkoff were detrimental to the conference. The conference currently faces the possibility of extinction within the college sports landscape if its expansion plan fails.