Canzano: Could Oliver Luck help save the Pac-4?
Remaining four schools have hired Luck to consult.
JOHN CANZANO
AUG 11
In the course of trying to figure out what comes next for Oregon State, Washington State, Stanford and Cal, I learned something interesting.
Oliver Luck is on the scene.
He’s been hired as a consultant.
The 63-year-old has held a variety of positions in his career: NCAA executive, college athletic director, NFL quarterback and commissioner of the XFL, among them. He has four children, three of whom attended Stanford (including Andrew).
Luck declined comment for this piece but I’m told by sources that he’s been hired to serve the Pac-4 schools in an advisory role. The four remaining members are in a dicey spot with limited options, but Luck’s involvement in the dilemma is interesting.
Could Luck help save the Pac-4?
It’s a long shot, but I sure feel better about the conference’s chance to survive with him around.
Stanford and Cal explored membership in the ACC this week, but appear to have met some resistance there. The Big Ten doesn’t appear to have an appetite to expand to 20 schools, yet. Meanwhile, OSU and WSU are waiting to see if the four remaining schools can find footing together before moving on individually.
“Are there four schools when all the dust settles? Is that three? Is that two? Is that one? Is that none? Your instincts are correct,” Washington State AD Pat Chun told me this week. “That’s the first step.”
That’s where Luck comes in.
He was a candidate for the Pac-12 commissioner job when George Kliavkoff was hired. Luck is a terrific back-channel operator who is deeply connected on a variety of levels. His initial task, I’m told by sources, is to evaluate the Pac-4’s assets and options.
The conference’s CEO Group now has only four board seats. The remaining members may feel adrift, but they do have some interesting and sudden control. Also, the conference still has “Autonomous 4” status and the automatic postseason berths that come with it.
The Pac-4 members may attempt to keep an imbalanced share of conference revenue in the next year. The conference expects to receive $420 million in television and postseason funds.
There’s also an “emergency fund” that had more than $40 million in it before the pandemic hit in 2020.
How much is left in the fund? Could the Pac-4 justify the use of revenue to pay San Diego State’s $34 million MWC buyout? How about SMU? Also, is there a media-rights deal out there for a reconstructed conference?
Luck will help the remaining members sort out those answers in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, shortly before publishing this, I reached out to an executive at one of the four remaining schools with a follow-up question: Am I being naive to think rebuilding the Pac-4 is a viable option?
The answer: “No you are not.”
