As rumors fly over how the Big Ten Conference might expand, the Pacific-10 Conference is doing some soul-searching of its own—hoping to elevate its status among the elite leagues.
The Pac-10 likes to call itself “the Conference of Champions,” and the moniker isn’t far off the mark: The league’s 10 member institutions, spread from Arizona to Washington, have won more NCAA titles than any other conference. They boast strong programs in football and men’s basketball, dominate many women’s and Olympic sports, and have stellar reputations as research universities.
But in recent years, as the commercial engine of college sports has shifted into high gear, the Pac-10 has found itself fumbling with the clutch. Despite having two of the country’s top media markets within its borders—Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area—the conference pulls in less TV money than all but one of the six major conferences: $58-million each year. The Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference each make more than $200-million. While those two conferences inked new deals within the past two years, the Pac-10, which also grapples with late-starting games on the West Coast, hasn’t renegotiated its television deals for several years.
Enter Larry Scott, who took over as the Pac-10’s new commissioner last July. An honors graduate of Harvard University, where he studied European history and was an All-American tennis player, Mr. Scott was hired to jump-start the conference’s stalled media-rights contracts and usher the league into its next era. The 45-year-old former chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, who speaks in a measured, cerebral tone, replaced Thomas C. Hansen, who had led the conference for 26 years before retiring in June. While at the WTA, Mr. Scott guided the tour toward the largest television agreement in women’s tennis history and helped negotiate equal prize money for men and women in Grand Slam events.
Candid about the challenges facing the Pac-10, Mr. Scott acknowledges the perception among many observers that the league has “rested on its laurels” for too long.
“One of the reasons I was brought in is that the sands are shifting in terms of college sports,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s an expectation that college conferences are going to be highly professional, very efficient, and achieve important things on behalf of the schools.”
Over the past two months, he has hired several high-level officials. The new general counsel is the former top lawyer for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs; the chief marketing officer, a brand-new position for the conference, was head of marketing for the company that owns the Sacramento Kings, an NBA franchise.
The corporate model is intentional: Mr. Scott says he wants the Pac-10’s new look to be a blend of the best of the college and professional sports-league models. College sports are an educational experience, he says, but at this level, they are also a form of entertainment—and a “modern conference” needs to reflect that.
Talk of Expansion
Late last year, when the Big Ten announced it was seriously considering the addition of a 12th member, the blogosphere immediately lit up with speculation—Pittsburgh? Notre Dame? Missouri?—and has yet to quiet down. (Big Ten officials are mum on the process.)
Rumors about the Pac-10 have been more muted. Mr. Scott readily admits that the league’s presidents are discussing the possibility of expanding. But only if it makes financial sense, and only if the prospective members can clear the conference’s high bar for athletics and academics. Seven of the league’s members belong to the prestigious Association of American Universities.
“There’s no reason the Pac-10 has to look at expanding beyond creating more value for our members,” he says. “Sometimes conferences have thought about changing their makeup because they have some imbalance,” he says—wanting to strengthen its profile in football, say, or basketball. In the Pac-10, “none of those issues exist.”
Conference alignments are constantly shifting as colleges jockey to join the league that best fits their athletics aspirations. In 1990 the Big Ten added its 11th member, Penn State, after four decades of unchanged membership, while the SEC brought in Arkansas and South Carolina in 1991. Three years later, the Big Eight Conference became the Big 12 with the addition of four universities in Texas. In 2004 the Atlantic Coast Conference branched out to include Miami and Virginia Tech, and Boston College the following year. Also in 2005, the Big East brought in Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, and South Florida.
The Pac-10, in the meantime, has had the same membership since 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State joined the league. With four contiguous states and five sets of natural rivalries, the conference is “pretty ideally laid out,” Mr. Scott says. “There’s been no impetus for expansion up till now.”
That all could change next year if the presidents give the green light. Robert N. Shelton was the provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill several years ago, when the ACC added three new institutions, and was skeptical of whether the move made sense financially. This time around, as president of the University of Arizona, he says a bigger Pac-10 could be a good thing. Having a television presence in another region of the country could help, for example, with recruitment of out-of-state students—and additional revenue is always welcome, he says. Still, the outcome of the “balancing act” between academic consistency and financial benefits will very likely prove to be the deciding factor.
Making a Play
The major inspiration for expansion is money: With a greater inventory of colleges and games, and a beefed-up television market, the Pac-10 could command larger payouts from a network or cable partner. And with 12 members instead of 10, the conference could also break into divisions and have a conference football championship game.
Another option would be to follow in the Big Ten’s footsteps and create a Pac-10 television network. Mr. Scott declines to say whether this is a possibility. But he does say that one of his goals is to increase the exposure of the conference’s Olympic sports—one of the main selling points of the Big Ten Network, which in addition to netting more than $240-million each year for the conference, also devotes equal airtime to men’s and women’s sports.
If the conference expands—and Mr. Scott takes care to emphasize the “if"—where might it look? Brigham Young, Utah, and Colorado have been floated as potential candidates and a way to bring in the Salt Lake City or Denver television markets. To a lesser extent, so have the University of Nevada campuses at Reno and Las Vegas, with their hold on the Las Vegas market. But there are no shoo-ins.
“If it was completely obvious, it probably would have happened long before I was here,” Mr. Scott says.
Adding two new members could bring in more viewers, but it would also require splitting the profits 12 ways instead of 10—and could, depending on where the newest members are located, increase the cost of travel to games. In the next month or two, Mr. Scott will hire consultants to evaluate the potential of various television markets. If the expansion were to happen, it would occur within the next year, before the conference starts taking bids for its next TV contract.
The new commissioner is also mulling an expansion of a different sort. With member universities that draw large numbers of students from countries in the Pacific Rim, the conference might take advantage of marketing and broadcast opportunities in Asia.
“There’s a natural affinity between the Pac-10 schools and the Pacific Rim,” he says. “Having spent 20 years marketing sports internationally, I’m keenly aware of some of the opportunities in sports marketing outside the confines of the United States.”
Still, it’s unclear what form that overseas venture would take. It could be international competition, or good-will tours, or the sale of media rights in those markets. “This will be a bit of an experiment,” he admits.
Before Mr. Scott looks to Asia, though, the former global sports executive will have to settle the matter of the Pac-10’s domestic borders, much closer to home.
