LAS VEGAS—The Pac-12 really wants to talk about football during media day. It’s easy to understand why. The league has inarguably the best depth at the quarterback position in the sport with Heisman trophy winner Caleb Williams, Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix, Oregon State’s DJ Uiagalelei, Arizona’s Jayden de Laura, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Washington State’s Cam Ward. To kick things off, they played a sizzle reel hyping up their teams voiced-over by John Elway, Aaron Rodgers and Carson Palmer. Playoff dark horses Oregon and USC will have to get past two-time conference champion Utah. For the first time in a long time, the football should be coming first in the league. And yet, two elephants in the room, or more accurately not in the room, loomed large.
First, as commissioner George Kliavkoff acknowledged in his opening statement, there is the media rights deal that is still not done. The hope within the league, according to multiple sources, is that at some point before the football season starts a rights deal will be signed and announced.
“The longer we wait, the better our options get, and I think the board [of directors] realizes that,” Kliavkoff said.
The timing of the Pac-12’s deal has been a consistently moving target, with early estimates by some administrators within the league estimating that it could have been done as early as March. Instead, the subplot to the league’s summer has dragged on, stemming from the fact that the Big 12 effectively jumped the Pac-12 in line and signed a deal well ahead of their expected timeline last fall.
“I don't consider it frustrating,” Kliavkoff said. “It’s a reinforcement for me of what dedicated and passionate fans we have and how much people care about college athletics. I get it. At the same time, I don’t want the opportunity to be missed today to talk about football. We’re not announcing a deal on purpose today because I want the focus to be on football.”
Lucas Peltier/AP
The final portion of the quote would imply that a deal is in fact done, something a reporter then asked a follow-up question about. Kliavkoff responded that he believed the reporter was reading too much into his comment, and he reiterated that the focus was to be on football.
In the days ahead of media day, news began to leak that the Pac-12 would not have a deal to announce at media day, which some assumed would be a reasonable time to do so given Kliavkoff has not given a press conference since last December and dozens of local and national media were scheduled to be in attendance.
Many of those media were also in attendance hoping to see Colorado coach Deion Sanders. Forty-eight hours before media days, Colorado announced, surprisingly, that Sanders had been scheduled for a routine follow-up procedure to the emergency foot surgery he had in late June. As a result, defensive coordinator Charles Kelly took his place. Kelly was told just a few days ago that he’d be taking his boss’s place. The procedure was done with fall camp in mind so that Sanders might hopefully be at full go for that and his girlfriend confirmed that the surgery was successful.
“He asked me if I would do it, and I said I’d be honored to do it,” Kelly said. “We have a lot of people on our staff that are capable of being here. We have had a great coaching staff and a great support team, not only just on the field coaches but everyone we have in the organization.”
Some of the steam was taken out of the event, but Sanders is expected to be back soon. The resolution of the TV deal, however, remains a moving target. Estimations can be made, but they’ve been off base in the past. Whether they will be again could take an offseason storyline and unfortunately inject it into the most important Pac-12 football season in recent memory.
