During halftime of Oregon’s Thursday night matchup against Arizona State, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott spoke with the media in the press box of Sun Devils Stadium:
Any comments on Arizona State’s Pat Tillman uniforms?
I think it’s kind of neat and very unusual how (Arizona State) has honored the legacy of a player like Pat Tillman. Every year, I’ve really been impressed with what they do, they’ve kind of taken it to another level this year with the uniforms and a campus-wide focus on it.
Several coaches have expressed opinions on these Thursday night games and kickoff times, how much is the Pac-12 conference involved with possibly adjusting the kickoff times?
There’s actually very little that we can do to adjust it because it’s really baked into our television contracts, starting in 2012 there were a few important adjustments that we made. One of the trade’s we made in that discussion was getting more exposure on ABC and FOX broadcast network, that were exclusive windows. When those games on the ABC or FOX broadcast network nationally, the trade-off is that we agreed to give them an exclusive window, therefor any other games half to go early or late.
The SEC has a transfer policy that won’t allow players to transfer into the conference with serious prior misconduct, has the Pac-12 thought about having those kinds of conversations to adopt something similar?
On Monday I’ve got a meeting with our board of directors, our presidents and chancellors, so we’ve put this on the agenda to discuss. We’ve had a chance to discuss this with out athletic directors and athletics administrators last week, when they were there. We’re going to discuss it.
One of the ongoing national dialogues is that the Pac-12 seems to be a frontrunner to be left out of the playoff this year, is there any need for the conference to politicize the process so to speak?
There’s still so much football left to play, trying to predict how it’s all going to shake out is guess work – it really depends on how our teams do. We got three one-loss teams still, so we’ll see who we see in the (Pac-12) championship. I think I’ll have a better feel for it when we see what kind of shape our teams are in when we get to the championship game at Levi’s Stadium, and we see what it looks like in the other conferences … We clearly have less margin for error because we don’t have any undefeated teams.
In the past, with the BCS system, with only a couple human polls counting in it, there was a sense you had to fight your fight, is there any way to influence the committee with that?
It’s one thing I really like about the new committee structure. I think it’s going to be much more fact based, and the lobbying aspect is really out of the system now. We’ve got committee members who are following our conference and other conferences, in fact we had our first call this week with the two committee members that are following our conference. I feel very good about the process, I have a lot of confidence in the process, there really is no need to lobby because you know the 13 people that are on the committee that are going to be discussing, making their decision, have seen all the facts and we’ve had a chance to communicate directly to them.
Do you think that helps take away some of the perceived East coast bias?
Yea, a big improvement. You don’t have to worry about are they seeing the games, not seeing the games, what’s the perception, what’s the bias. They’re seeing all the games, studying it, and I don’t think it’s based on perception or bias.
Follow Andrew Bantly on Twitter @andrewbantly.