Canzano: A doozy of dizzy developments for the Pac-12 Conference - OregonLive

The Pac-12 Conference has certainly had worse days than Friday.

Still.

It hit like a bag of bricks, didn’t it?

The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors emerged on Friday from a virtual meeting and announced that like some others they’re going with a conference-only football schedule in the fall. Also, the latest Form 990 was released, underscoring the conference’s sobering financials. And to top matters off, turns out Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott is positive COVID-19.

It went like this: Jab. Hook. Uppercut.

I was left dizzy by the day. Bet you were too. But while this conference has been accused of a lot of things, including recent underachievement, one thing it is not -- boring.

The vote to go to a conference-only schedule was the worst-kept secret in some time. The Pac-12 followed the Big Ten’s lead on that one. Given that Oregon (which had Ohio State on the schedule) and Washington (booked to play Michigan) now had open dates, I wonder if the conference had much choice.

Also, it was inevitable that Power Five Conference members with deeper pockets would soon realize that some of the other non-conference opponents just weren’t going to be able to budget for testing protocols that would match the larger institutions.

Portland State, for example, was scheduled to play both Arizona and Oregon State this season. The Vikings planned to test its football players upon arrival to camp, but after that initial coronavirus test the Big Sky Conference member would only test if the players were symptomatic.

There’s a financial hit looming.

PSU was scheduled to receive $550,000 to play Arizona and another $400,000 to play at Corvallis. It’s why Vikings’ athletic director Valerie Cleary was closely following the news this week. Now, like a lot of other small-conference administrators she’ll be lawyered up, closely studying force majeure case law. So will Hawaii, presumably, which was set to make $1 million to play at Autzen Stadium this season.

But law is not where the rest of us should be focused right now. Because this is just beginning.

The reality is, all the Pac-12 did on Friday was punt. It bought itself a few more weeks to decide what to do. Same for the Big Ten. The presidents and chancellors know that the data isn’t trending a positive direction right now. The entire fall college football season is in doubt. The Ivy League, which moved first to cancel all fall sports, doesn’t just appear to train leaders, it just might be one.

Three weeks. Maybe a month. If the data doesn’t improve, the next move for the Pac-12 Conference is announce it is pushing the entire football season into the spring. After that, it would be the announcement of a full-blown cancellation.

While that was being absorbed on Friday, the conference revealed its fiscal numbers for 2018-19 by releasing the Form 990. That document showed, once again, that the Pac-12 is lagging woefully behind when it comes to generating revenue for its members.

There was an uptick of revenue generated ($530.4 million). Operating expenses increased ($41.7 million). And Scott, who made $5.3 million in the last reported year, got a raise to $5.4 million.

Distributions to members by conference per university in last reported fiscal year:

Big Ten: $56 million

SEC: $45 million

Big 12: $39 million

Pac-12: $32.2 million

ACC: $32 million

That’s the scoreboard. In the last reported fiscal year, Ohio State and Michigan, for example, each received $24 million more than Oregon and Washington did from its conference. Oklahoma State got $6.8 million more from the Big 12 than Oregon State did from its conference.

Those non-conference football matchups are off now, of course, but from a revenue standpoint, the Pac-12 universities mentioned would have kicked off the season from a tremendous financial disadvantage. It helps explain why the Pac-12 hasn’t made the four-team College Football Playoff in three straight seasons.

Scott hasn’t cut an inspiring figure as a conference commissioner. He’s mired in a puddle of problems that he helped foster. But nobody wishes the guy harm. Last December, before kickoff of the Pac-12 Championship football game at Levi’s Stadium, Scott told me in the stadium’s back hallway he’d done some soul searching.

“I think I took some shots that were unfair,” he said. “I’m not trying to duck it. I took some things to heart. I think the perception was that I was out there marching to my own beat and I’ve tried to present a more together... we’re together... unified stance.”

The uppercut punch landed on Friday evening: Scott has COVID-19.

The commissioner had mild flu-like symptoms last week. He took a test. It came back positive for coronavirus. The Pac-12 knew earlier in the day, per multiple sources, that Scott was positive. It waited until after business hours and then released a statement at 5:30 p.m. PT announcing the news and indicating that Scott was quarantined on the direction of his physician.

“Commissioner Scott is continuing to carry on his duties remotely as normal,” the statement read.

It’s a lot to absorb. None of it uninteresting. And all of it happened on the same day. These are the times we’re in. The landscape is shifty. The virus keeps punching. College athletics is getting the equivalent of a standing eight count. And while I’m hopeful that we’ll get a vaccine, therapeutics and a return to normalcy, I’m increasingly aware that the universities themselves really don’t know what’s coming next.

It’s why they’re simultaneously working off three or four models, adapting as they go.

I read this week about a Japanese amusement park that reopened last week outside of Tokyo. The re-opening came with a strange new rule, however. Customers were told to wear masks and distance when possible, of course. Also, they were advised by the establishment that they were no longer allowed to scream on the roller coasters.

The amusement park advised: “Please scream inside your heart.”

Ain’t it the truth.

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