The Dave Pasch Podcast - George Kliavkoff

was the PAC twelve in all of this? What were Georgia's thoughts on what went down inside that room when they voted against the model, and what are his thoughts on where the PAC twelve is with regard to scheduling college football games, trying to be more of a player with television and getting an audience beyond the West Coast.

I would like for our best teams, particularly late in the season, if they put themselves in a position for a CFP invitation or for a Heisman Trophy vote, to be able to highlight them earlier in the day as a post to playing in the nighttime West Coast game. Also the nil name, image and likeness. How is that shaping the future of college sports? George is very familiar with all of this, even though he's in month number nine as the commissioner of the conference. He was the

president of Entertainment in Sports for MGM Resorts. He worked with Major League Baseball, with the National Hockey League and bringing the Golden Nights to Las Vegas, so he's very familiar with putting on a show with regard to sports and making sports entertainment. They'll talk about that and much more. We are presented by BETMGM, the official sports betting partner of the Arizona Cardinals, and by Hilo River Hotels and Casinos.

Sign up for BETMGM today using code cards one thousand and get your first bet risk free you up to one thousand dollars new customer offer paid in free bets. Visit betmgm dot Comference Terms and conditions twenty one and over Arizona only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call one eight hundred next step here. He is the commissioner of the PAC twelfth Conference. George kleof Coff Well, George, first

of all, I really appreciate you doing this. This is actually primarily an NFL podcast through the Arizona Cardinals and my job as the play by playhouse for the Cardinals, but we branched out and done guests from the entertainment world, from the NBA and college sports as well. We had Kirk curb Street on during the college football season, and I wanted to get you on to talk college football, to talk college basketball, but to start by talking about what the first eight months on the job have been

like for you in this position. Yeah, no, absolutely, you know. The joke is that the last eight months have been the most interesting decade of my career. My timing was impeccable. I started on July first, which was the first day of nil Mame image and likeness is a couple of weeks after the Alston decision by the Supreme Court, and a couple of weeks before we found out about conference realignment with Texas and Oklahoma, you know, leaving the Big

Twelve together to the SEC eventually. So it's been challenging. There's been a lot of stuff going on. I would say personally, it's been humbling and motivating to work with our world class universities and to support the amazing student athletes that we get to work with. So unprecedented change, but but very exciting for me. And I'm you know, I'm not a guy with a long background in history in college athletics, which was a new space for me. Yeah,

you mentioned your timing. I mean, this is the wildest time that I can remember in my forty nine years on this planet for college sports and just everything that's going on. You talked about nil and you you know everybody right now that the hot topic is college football and I want to get there in a second. But your history in charge of being the president of Entertainment in sports for MGM Resorts, how do you feel like, I know you've talked about this else where or else

we're maybe a little bit more in depth here. How do you feel like that shaped you for this job and the challenges that being the commissioner of a major conference? What that requires. Well, I've been in sports and media and digital technology for twenty five plus years. In my career in different places professional sports as well as as

you mentioned MGM Resorts. I worked for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, and I've worked for big media companies, And you know, I think of sports and what we do as kind of a subset of entertainment, and you know, we have other issues that we have to address because of the unique nature of our student athletes. But at the end of the day, we're putting on a show,

and we're creating made for television content. And I think lessons learned at MGM Resorts and at Major League Baseball and working for media companies really aligned well with what we're trying to to do, particularly for the PAC twelve, which you know has less than two and a half years left on all of our current media rights deals and we're just starting the process of renegotiating those. When we think about that, we have to think about what's great for our media partners and our fans and our

student ATHLETs. What made for TV programming should we be creating? Well, the only VSPN just yet, George, feel like we're just getting started with even though it's with Bill and obviously doing the college football games on the PAC twelve. What would you say your goals are that you know you want to accomplish not just for the conference, but to for college sports in general in the direction where college sports is going. Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about college

sports sport broadly in a second. But but we've had since I started. I think I actually announced it when I was introduced months before I started, We've had four key priorities for the PAC twelve and just an order of kind of priority. The first is, historically our conference has been the best in class in supporting student athletes. We've been ahead of the game on benefits for student athletes, We've been ahead of the game on diversity equity inclusion issues.

We were the first conference, as an example, to include student athletes in our government structure, and that's a leadership role that I want to continue to extend for the conference.

Second priority is related to football and men's basketball. You know, we are a Power five conference that hasn't won one of those two sports a national championship in seventeen years, and I think that's just a really difficult position to be in and an unfortunate position and inconsistent with our history going back of being very strong in those sports. So everything we can do at the conference level to optimize for CFP invitations and men's basketball tournament invites and seating,

we're going to do. Our third priority is to continue our leadership position and being the conference of champions despite kind of that drout in those two sports, we've dominated all the other sports when we gets fifty three of the last sixty years, including each of the last sixteen years, we've won more national championships than any other conference, and

we intend to continue that and extend it. And then finally four fourth priority is what I mentioned before, which is we have all of these media rights steals coming up for renegotiation, and we have to balance how we think about renegotiating those media rights steals and who we choose to be our partner or partners in that space with revenue and mind certainly, the money that we distribute from our media rights steals is what supports a lot of our student athlete programs, but we also have to

look at broader exposure and flexibility with how and when we play our games to allow us to continue to compete competitively in all of these sports. So along those lines, George, and it's just something Larry Scott, your predecessor, had discussed. What are your thoughts on you know, noon Eastern kicks but they're ninety local kicks on a Saturday, to try to get the PAC twelve viewer into that early window on ESPN or on Fox, or you know, having games

on different nights. Obviously, Thursdays and Fridays have been you know, long standing, there have been games in the pac twelve on both those nights. But can you just talk about with regard to scheduling, Yeah, listen, I think there it's all trade offs. Right. We have played nine am bodyclock games. I was at the game where Oregon beat Ohio State at the horses Shoe earlier this year. That was a nine am Oregon bodyclock kickoff and we did very well.

Making that a regular programming feature on the West Coast I think might be a little bit more difficult. But here how I think about it, we are the only Power five conference that has teams in the Mountain and Pacific time zones until BYU joins the Big twelve and a couple of years, and as a result, we are able to provide programming in a primetime West Coast window for our partners at ESPN and at Fox and others can't provide. That's really, really valuable, and we get paid

a premium to do that. Now, that comes at a cost, right. Part of the cost is in the stadium. It's harder to build kind of family traditions of going to games when the young kids of the game and starting at seven thirty or eight o'clock on a Saturday night kids might not be able to stay up for that. Part

of it is national costs, right. We have games that are played whereby halftime, seventy five percent of the population of the country is most likely not watching the game because they're in bed, and that hurts us for AP votes and CFP votes and Heisman Trophy votes if we're focused on football and we just have to balance those. So do I want to play and be more creative

and be more flexible about playing in different time slots. Absolutely? Do. I want to work with our media partners to have a little bit more control over which of our teams played at which time slots. Absolutely. I would like for our best teams, particularly late in the season, if they put themselves in a position for a CFP invitation or for a Heisman Trophy vote, to be able to highlight them earlier in the day as opposed to playing in

the night time West Coast game. That doesn't mean we won't be playing a game then, it just maybe two different teams. Before we jump into the college football playoff expansion discussion. I'm curious do you think, Georgie, that you're the only commissioner that tweets out about shuffling Dre Snoop

and Eminem for his music listen in the morning. Like, I don't know if I see Jim Phillips, the ACC commissioner, or Greg Sanky in doing that, but I think I think Greg, thank you, and I are the only ones who routinely use Twitter personally as opposed to the conference. All of our conferences use Twitter, but Greg, Greg and I seem to be active on Twitter and follow each other. And what I would say is Greg's an intellectual. Greg often tweets out what the last book is that he

read and why it's important to him. I'm focused on you know, when I'm not talking about conference stuff, I'm focused on music, and I'm focused on fishing and other stuff. And I think that probably explains the difference between Greg and I. He's very cerebral now. But I appreciated that tweet. I saw that, and then I also saw some of

your your tweets with a fish that you caught. There are fish stories, but you actually have proof as you tweeted out a picture of you or it actually might have been your abbey on your Twitter at one point with you and yeah, that was a I went ice fishing for the first time last month outside of Jack and how Wyoming. And it was on a Friday, and you know, I took Friday off and I kind of felt proud of myself for taking a Friday off in

the middle of the basketball season. And the fact that I caught a bunch of fish was great and I was happy to share it. But the message there was really I'm taking a personal day, and I was encouraging the other folks who worked for the Pac twelve to take personal days as well. I think recharges is important, particularly in this job. This is a twenty four seven, three sixty five job, or there is no downtime in college. I bought a three face well, I often take personal days.

George the day after working with Bill Walton, who you know very well. Bill. He is a big champion of the Conference of Champions. How much time have you spent with Bill and what was your first experience like with him? Well, as a fan, I have listened to him and watched him, you know, on games for a long long time before

I actually met him. I met him when I was at MGM Resorts in Vegas, and you know, part of my responsibility was we ran the Mandeliday Event Center where the women's basketball tournament for the PAC twelve is, NT Mobile Arena where the men's basketball Championship is. And you know, as the person who was running sports and entertainment at MGM, it's just natural that you run across Bill and get introduced to Bill. And I was quite surprised in advance of one of the tournaments. I think it was a

couple of years back. You know, he found my number called Bay and he said, I want to know all about MGM. I want to know about T Mobile. I want to know about um, you know, everything that you guys do and how T mobile fits into that and

how to PAC twelve fits into that. And what I found is that he's just incredibly diligent about doing the homework, you know, before he gets on the air and then he drops all these little tickets, as you know better than I do, but that those tickets come from lot and lots of work behind the scenes before the game starts. And I was the subject of a lot of that when I was before I joined the conference. Oh yeah, I think at one point you might have actually been

part of Walton Bingo. There might have been a square with your name on it because there was where you are getting a lot a lot of mentions, and you know, with your work in connection to the city of Las Vegas, I'm curious, what's the reception of the Raiders been like there and how do you see that continuing to grow in Vegas. Well, Listen, I think all professional sports that

have come to Vegas have seen great success. Right. I was very fortunate at MGM to oversee and run the Las Vegas Aces, which is a w NBA team that we brought to Las Vegas several years back. One of the last things I did at MGM before I left was to actually sell the Aces to Mark Davis, who

owns the Raiders. As I mentioned running T Mobile Arena, we were the beneficiaries of the Vegas Golden Knights expansion team, I mean, maybe the most successful expansion team in the history of professional sports, making the Stanley Cup Championship their first year out of the gate and being the playoffs every year. And the Raiders I think will find great

success there. And it's good for the Raiders. I think they have a home and to have passionate fans that you know, previously had not had an NFL team to root for, but I also think it's great for the city. I think, you know, more than two thirds of the folks who are in that stadium are traveling from out of town come to Vegas to go to those games.

Most of those traveling teams are raiders fans from California and other places, but there are also lots of fans from visiting teams, and that really helps the economy here in Vegas. So I think it's a great thing. So let's shift gears to college football. In the recent news,

George about playoff expansion not happening, falling through. Not sure if that's the best way to describe it, but I think for you know, for people that were hoping that there would be an expansion beyond the four teams to twelve before the contract runs out in twenty twenty five, the hope was that you guys would have been able to get something done that didn't happen where And I read that the PAC twelve is one of three conferences, to the other two being you know, the Big ten

in the ACC part of the alliance with you guys that you guys voted against it. I know you had talked publicly a lot about being a proponent for expansion. So can you just kind of tell everybody you know the timeline of that, did something change along the way, what ultimately was it about the YEA, yeah, I'll try

to make it as clear as possible. And again you have to balance, like I really think one of the mistakes we've made is to announce a formula that not everyone that needed to agree to it had agreed to yet, and to miss out the expectations. So to get into the details of who said what in the room, I'm not going to do that, but at a very high level, I'll tell you kind of what's public and will explain what happened the way that the construct currently is for

college football playoffs. If you want to change the format or anything else during the current term, you need unanimous consent from all eleven people who get to vote, and the vote comes from the Board board of the CFP, which is made up of eleven presidents and chancellors, one from each of the ten FDS conferences and Father Jenkins

from Never Dame. And there's a Board of Managers, which are the ten conference commissioners and the athletic directors of neverdain that make recommendations to the board on how to vote, but eventually the board has to vote, and you need eleven yes votes to change anything within the current term. And the proposal came down with the twelve teams, you know, six automatic qualifiers, six at large playing games in December, four games New Year's weekend, and then semifinals and finals

and later in January. And I actually think there's quite a lot to be sent for that formula. We had some issues with it specific timing, you know, where the playing games would be played, you know, some academic and kind of student health issues that we actually worked through. And if the question at her hand would have been do you want to expand for years eleven and twelve in the twelve team proposed model, our vote would have

been yes. And I think despite the fact that our vote would have been yes, it would not have passed because the other two conferences that you mentioned are on the record saying they would not have voted for it for different reasons. The acc just doesn't think it's the right time to expand, and the Big Ten has publicly said that they don't think six automatic qualifiers to the

sixth highest ranked conference champions is appropriate. They think each of the Power five should get an automatic qualifier, and then one automatic qualifiers should go to the next highest ranked conference champion. So I would have voted yes, but that wasn't the vote. The vote was, will you agree to expand to the twelve team playoff for years eleven, twelve and beyond, you know, like years thirteen and beyond. And what we have in year thirteen and beyond is

no current contractional commitment to each other. There's no granted rights, there's no there's no contract. So what you need to expand beyond that is just enough people to say they want to agree on playing in a certain format and then move forward. And I'm in favor the patch twelve is in favor of all sorts of different extensions formats. We've been in favor of twelve teams eighteen six plus six, five plus one plus, which is what the Big ten

has asked for. And the only thing I said is there are some issues that we need to resolve before I could vote yes or that. And the one that gets widely reported is the rose Pole. We can talk about that, animate that's a tiny little issue. Set that aside. The other thing I said is I also want to know whether we're sticking with the current revenue split or whether people are proposing changing the revenue split understanding that the pie will be bigger, there'll be more money if

you're playing more games. And the answer I got is we're not going to commit to the current revenue split and we're not going to discuss that. So are you voting yes or no? And in my life, I've never voted or signed a contract. I don't know the financial terms of the contract, so I was forced to vote no. I would much rather have agreed on expansion. I continue to want to do the work behind the scenes to solve the open issues. Are open issues issues, open issues,

Big Ten's open issues. I think we're going to get there, But what I really hope is that we actually do the work first and then announce the outcome, as opposed to announce what a couple of people have agreed to and then hope everybody else comes along. So and I do want to get to the Rose Bowl, because yeah, people have brought that up as a you know, as a proposed sticking point. Why were there so many that

voted for expansion not knowing the financials beyond twenty twenty five. Well, I think several of them probably think that they deserve more of the financials and or you know, may or may not want to demand that. I think others are desperate for access to the CFP and would have voted for anything that gave them access. So, you know, I can't speak for other commissioners. I don't know the answer.

I think we're going to get there anyway. And the other I guess the other thing focus on is if we know, because we can't get a unanimous boat, that we're not expanding in years twenty four and twenty five, and we're really talking about what does it look like in twenty six and beyond. We got a couple of years to figure that out, and lots of other stuff is going on in college athletics that we could hopefully settle or resolve or get a little bit more piece

around before we have to decide this. This is not the highest priority, and I think kind of putting it on the back burner for a little while is helpful. So touch on the rose bowl if you ken, George, and then just if you can follow up on what you just said about issues that are more important, maybe kind of give us a sense of you know in your mind what those issues are. Yeah, So just quickly

on the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowls, as have all of the other Year six bowls, and the particularly the contract balls, have been very flexible as the playoffs have developed and expanded. And as an example, you know, one every three years in the current cycle, the Rose Ball doesn't get to play on the day in time it wants to play. It plays later, and it plays as semifinal.

So what I would say is, in the twelve team proposed model, each of the six New Year's Day Bowl games would commit to play a semi sorry, the quarterfinal, quarterfinal, semifinal, and the quarterfinals would be on New Year's weekend. So two years out of three they'd be the Rose bol would be playing in its traditional time slot, and the third year it would be playing a semifinal or a week or two later. And the Rose Bowl has the

right if they want. On the years where they're playing a semifinal, Tosti also host a traditional Rose Bowl, and I don't know whether they would do that or not, but they have the right to do that. Now, remember they wouldn't be getting my number one or two team against the big ten's one or two team, because if you put twelve teams into the playoffs, now they're getting my give or take third best team against the big

tens give or take order fourth test team. If you look back over the last nine years of the CFP, so you've already kind of hams from what the Rose Bowl looks like. And what we were asking for is very simple. During the times if the Rose Bowl choose is to have one of those games every three years, we don't want the CFP to further harm the Rose Ball by counter programming a quarter final in that same

three hour time slot on January first. So literally the protections we're asking for the Rose Ball is three hours every three years. And we've also said if other Bowl games want the same protection, we think it's worthy of giving them the same protection for their traditional time slots to the extent they have them during the New Year's weekend.

And for me, that's like a very small ask that helps balance progress and expanding the CFP against the more than one hundred year tradition of the Tournament of Roses and the granddaddy of them all. That's a difficult balance, but it's what you're asking others to give up is counterprogramming three hours every three years. I think it's an incredibly small ask. I think the vast majority of people

in the CFP room support that. I think there are a few folks that you know, would like to see the Rose Bowl harm but the vast majority understand the tradition and the importance of balancing the tradition. There last one because I know you got to go, and another time maybe we can talk about the NCAA tournament. But I'm curious because you did mention there are some other things you think are more important right now in college sports,

the need to be addressed. What would that be, Well, I'll give you four that I think are kind of top of mind right now, you know. So we we had in late June, the Supreme Court decided a case called Allston, which was whether or not the NCAA could create a limit on the educational benefits that we provide

to our student athletes. And basically, the Supreme Court said, any decision you make that applies to everybody will be subject to any trust courtiny, and you can't make a broad decision that limits any school's ability to make a

decision to provide those kind of benefits. I agree with that there happened to be a concurring opinion in that Supreme Court decision from Justice Kavanaugh that took it ten steps further and said, not only would it be subject to any trust courtiny, but your student athletes should be deemed to be employees. And I think if you go down that path, we have not done the work to

determine all of the harms that that would create. I believe if our student athletes are deemed to be employees, you would be creating a really really bad situation for the student athletes. Right if you're an employee of a professional sport, you get to choose where you play or are you drafted? Can the schools trade you? Can the schools fire you of your employee if you're not playing well.

Plus I think there would be knock on negative implications of that kind of a finding that would include probably a defunding of most or all of the other sports that are not profit generating. So I think that's a really slippery slope. So that's all stome Nil is something we're working through. The fact that we have a patchwork of state laws is a problem. We really need a federal kind of standard there, And for me, there are three right lines on name, image and likeness. One is

it shouldn't be able to be used for inducement. I can't pay you to go to a particular school. Number Two, it should not be used as pay for play. I think everybody's in agreement with that as well. And then third, the payment for name, image and likeness has to be

commiserate with the work required. Right. I think if we're paying a kid a million dollars to show up for an hour for the opening of a grocery store, I think that's not really paying that kid for his or her name imagining likeness, right, It's it's kind of hiding one of the other two things under the eyes of the name imagined likeness. But all those can be resolved

with federal legislation. The two others that kind of jumped to mind is the NCAA decided to undergo a constitutional convention starting in July that is continuing through this year, and that's really about how will some subset of the schools within Division one or within the NCAA self government. How will we set our rules and force our rules and set kind of guidelines that make sense and run

our championships. What's clear is it won't be kind of the way historically has been, which is kind of one rule for all of Division one, two or three that doesn't make sense. And then lastly, you know, we had starting in July with the leaking of the news about Texas and Oklahoma, a bunch of conference realigned and issues that have not yet fully resolved themselves. You see schools suing conferences about when they get to leave their conference.

We are very fortunate that the pat twelve and our friends at the Big ten and at the ACC all independently decided that, you know, all of our members are happy where they are and that we actually don't want to expand. And part of the reason why the alliance was formed and announced was when we have each independently come to that conclusion. We thought announcing that would actually add some stability to what, if you recall back in July and August was a vibrating kind of environment in

which no one was comfortable. Everybody thought of my school could give poach to that conference or this conference. So a little stability we thought would help Lesten George, I appreciate the time. I know the two of us have not had a chance to connect in person yet, and with as you know, Fox having the Paxel Tournament this year for men's basketball, I won't be able to see it, but hope I'll have a Pack twelve football game this fall we'll be able to connect. I appreciate the time.

So a lot of new information there from Pack twelve Commissioner George Kleovkoff with regard to where the PAC twelve stood on playoff expansion for college football, the finances that were involved, also a little bit of the scheduling and how the twelve team model would have looked in terms of how far and deep into January it would have gone, and also what that would have meant for the Rose Bowl.

It seems like maybe some of the reports about how important the Rose Bowl was in the decision by the PAC twelve to say no to the college football playoff expansion model seems like that was just a little bit overblown based on what George was saying there. We are presented by bet MGM, the official sports betting partner of the Eurozona Cardinals, and by Hila River Hotels and Casinos. Thanks again to our guests, Pack twelve Commissioner George KLAIOF call,

I'm Dave Pash. Thanks for listening to the Dave Pash Podcast. H