Reports: Pac-12 commissioner and officials receive massive bonuses
It's no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard college football hard over the past decade. It's even less of a secret at how poorly run and managed the Pac-12 conference has been through this pandemic with commissioner Larry Scott leading the way.
With the Pac-12 attempting to make a comeback and play college football this fall, the poorly executed leadership by Scott has the conference nowhere near organized enough to play when the time comes. Because of this, Scott has been ridiculed and vilified by coaches, players and local media as one of the main reasons the conference has continued to bleed instead of being the "conference of champions."
Now a report by Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News is indicating that Scott may be hurting the conference worse than ever before.
According to the report, Scott and other executive officials in the conference received their 2019 'performance bonuses' that totaled around $4 million. Scott received a $2.2 million bonus in performance and incentives as part of his $5 million salary.
This all comes about a month after the conference elected to lay off or furlough 94 of its 196 conference workers, with none of them coming at the management level.
According to the Deseret News, "A conference spokesperson told Wilner that the bonus payment timeline was moved up in hopes of retaining key employees and supporting those who were taking on announced salary reductions."
John Canzano, renowned columnist for the Oregonian really went after Scott for his porous decision of taking the bonus.
“Real leaders don’t take lucrative paydays when they’re about to lay off staff. Most of them will forgo the annual bonus. That’s what being a leader is about,” Conzano wrote. “What Scott could have done is announce that he wasn’t taking a dime of his $2.5 million bonus. Also, the commissioner could have paid back his outstanding $1.9 million interest-free loan in a lump sum. He hasn’t yet made a payment. The commissioner might have saved jobs with those moves.”
The bonuses come on the heels of Utah, and both Oregon schools laying off or furloughing employees to save money.
"As I have previously shared, the financial challenges that we are facing at Utah has led us to make difficult — but necessary — decisions to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said. “These changes include furloughs of various lengths for every department employee — including me, our executive cabinet and our head and assistant coaches. In addition, in some select cases, we have also eliminated positions through reductions in force. We also have eliminated all performance bonuses until further notice.”
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