Larry Scott's Summer To Do List

If you haven't heard, Larry Scott was announced as the new Pac 10 commissioner. He will take over the position, currently held by Tom Hansen, on July 1st. At first glance, Scott appears to be a great hire by the Pac 10 conference. His background is mainly in marketing and television and most recently he has been praised for his work as the CEO for the Women's Tennis Association. He even helped the WTA land a $88 million sponsorship from Sony Ericsson, the biggest sponsorship ever in women's sports. This fact alone leads me to believe he will be a great fit for the Pac 10. After all, who really wants to watch women's tennis anyways?

All joking aside, Larry Scott has a lot of work to do to improve the state of Pac 10 athletics. Here is a list of things I would like to see him improve starting this summer on July 1st.

1. Officiating -
For the past several years, football officials from the Pac 10 have been a punchline in the other Division 1 conferences around the nation. From the UO/Oklahoma onside kick fiasco of 2006 to last years UW/BYU excessive celebration call, Pac 10 refs have proven to the nation how horrible they are. It has gotten to the point where other conferences are wary of playing Pac 10 teams on the road. This lack of respect is certainly not helping the perspective that most outsiders hold of the Pacific 10 conference as a whole. Scott needs to take action immediately to improve the officiating and bring respect back to this conference.

2. Bowl Contracts -
Within the last decade, UO,Cal and ASU have all been left hanging out to dry when the BCS committee decided to go with a less-qualified team from another conference in their place. When it comes down to it, USC is the only Pac 10 team that seems to get the benefit of the doubt during bowl selections. This costs the conference millions of dollars and untold benefits of the national respect that comes with having two BCS bowl teams. The Pac 10 as a whole gets about as much respect from the BCS as the MWC. What is worse, apart from the “Granddaddy of them all”, the Pac-10 bowl tie-ins suck. As a whole, the Pac 10 gets less money from its bowl contracts with only one January bowl game. We consistently get the short end of the stick when it comes to bowl opponents and level of competition. With Scott's marketing background, hopefully he can work his way into a couple of better bowl contracts and bring some more respect to the Pac 10.

3. TV Contracts-

Four of the top fifteen television markets are in Pac 10 cities: Seattle, Phoenix, LA, and San Francisco. Compare that to the two in Big 10 cities (Detroit and Minneapolis) and you can start to see how poor the Pac 10's current TV contracts are. Right now the Pac 10 has weak deals with ABC/ESPN and CBS and regional deals with FSN and VERSUS. In general, ESPN picks up the game of the week and FSN and VERSUS are left to fight for the leftovers. Both FSN and VERSUS receive horrible ratings compared to ABC/ESPN and neither regional network does anything to promote the Pac 10's perception around the nation. Often times, Pac 10 teams are forced to move games to Thursday nights in order to receive more television exposure. If the Pac 10 is to improve its national image, it will have to get more games on television during hours when the rest of the nation is watching. Whether this is through a new Pac 10 network, or a better contract with CBS or NBC is for Larry Scott to decide.