Kliavkoff Takes Gloves Off at Media Day, Hits Back at Big 12
After taking a sucker punch a month ago, George Kliavkoff came out swinging.
While addressing the latest flurry of college football realignment that has rocked his conference and robbed it of USC and UCLA, the Pac-12 commissioner showed his combative side while addressing his audience on Media Day in Los Angeles.
On Friday, Kliavkoff refused to discuss any possible schools that might be considered for membership to fill the coming void presented by the L.A. schools joining the Big Ten in 2024.
However, conferences trying to poach more of his members weren't off limits at all.
Asked about Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark's suggestive remark about his conference being "open for business," Kliavkoff responded with sarcasm if not a veiled threat himself, saying, “I appreciate that. We haven’t decided yet if we’re going shopping there or not.”
The commissioner pointedly accused the Big 12 of underhanded dealings, suggesting, "I've spent the past four weeks trying to defend the Pac-12 from grenades lobbed in from every corner of the Big 12 trying destabilize our conference. ... I get it. I get why they are scared. I get why they are trying to destabilize us."
Whew.
Bringing everyone up to date, Kliavkoff appeared optimistic about selling Pac-12 media rights to multiple sources, including a big digital partner; acknowledged that expansion was being pursued and even hinted that the conference wouldn't completely abandon Los Angeles in the future.
"We might end up playing a lot of football games in L.A.," the commissioner said, without elaborating.
He likened the combination of realignment mixed with unenforced name, image and likeness opportunities to effectively turning the college game into "a handful of colleges playing professional sports at the expense of thousands of athletes."
Kliavkoff said his focus was keeping the remaining 10 Pac-12 schools together and building more revenue streams for them to be as competitive as possible.
"The 10 seem to be very unified," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. "We'll have to see where we're at when the dust settles, and the dust hasn't settled yet."
Kliavkoff called for the 10 FBS conferences to come together and agree to legislation that enforces guidelines regarding NIL opportunities and limits potential cheating, especially booster intervention.
"These are NCAA rules the NCAA unfortunately has chosen not to enforce," he said.
Kliavkoff said the way things are set up, players soon will become employees of some sort and lose a lot of their rights, such as the ability to change schools.
"A small handful of schools are playing professional sports at the expense of thousands of student-athletes," he said.
Finally, Kliavkoff was asked if he would embrace UCLA if it isn't able to make the move to the Big Ten in the end.
"I'd say UCLA is in a real difficult position," he said. "Lots of constituents connected to the decision are very, very unhappy. Students, fans, alumni. I think it's unlikely if they came back, but we'd welcome them back."
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