Memphis AD Ed Scott opens up on recent conference realignment moves: "Pac-12 offer was not a good deal" 

The conference realignment moves in the past fortnight have been mind-blowing, and the Pac-12's offer and appeal have proven too enticing to resist for some programs. The first schools to benefit were Fresno State, Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State from the Mountain West Conference.

Although the bright lights of the Pac-12 also lured the Utah State Aggies, other schools, including the Memphis Tigers and the Tulane Green Wave from the American Athletic Conference, have declined the siren call.

While speaking to the media on Thursday, Tigers athletic director Ed Scott said:

“That was not a binary decision. That was not a, ‘No, we’re not ever going anywhere.’ That was based on the offer that was presented in front of us. We’re not taking that offer because we don’t think less of ourselves.

“I think sometimes, we get enamored by the new and we wanna take a bad deal. That deal was not a good deal for the University of Memphis. It certainly wasn’t a good deal for our athletic department. And most importantly, it was a really, really bad deal for our Olympic sports.”

Why was the Pac-12 offer rejected by AAC schools?

The Tulane Green Wave and the Memphis Tigers were the prime targets for the Pac-12 offer from Commissioner Teresa Gould who wanted to establish a presence in the Central time zone.

The complications came from the hefty exit fees that would have been required of the two programs, reported by ESPN to be $22.5 million with no guarantee that the reconstituted "conference of champions," which has no TV rights deal, could offer more.

The report said that the Tigers' logistical costs would have increased by upwards of $2 million and that the student-athletes in some sports would have had to endure punishing travel times.

Athletic director Ed Scott said the Tigers would only benefit to the tune of $500,000 annually from the Pac-12 offer, making the move less beneficial for them.

“Travel wise, it would have to be about 20,000 miles that our [non-revenue sports] teams would have to travel in order to compete with the seven schools that are in there. And that’s if everything was a direct flight, and there’s not a direct flight from Memphis to Corvallis [Oregon] or Memphis to Pullman, Washington," Scott said.

“Do you know how far it is to go around the circumference of the Earth? Just under 25,000 miles…I just don’t think that was the right thing to do based off the finances we had,” he added.

The Pac-12 offer will undoubtedly prove to be irresistible for some schools in conferences like the Sun Belt, Mid-American and Big Sky, but to get the big guns from the AAC, Teresa Gould would have had to sweeten the pot more to have a chance of poaching them.