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PAC-12 MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 8, 2018

Larry Scott

Las Vegas, Nevada

COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: Welcome, everyone. We're excited to be here for our sixth tournament in Las Vegas. It's wound up being a great success for the conference and our teams being here. I want to thank you all for your support.

When we originally moved our tournament from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it was with a belief that there was a chance to raise the profile of the event, the atmosphere, the excitement, the overall environment for the student-athletes and our programs and really create a destination for our fans to look forward to. I think we've made a lot of progress against that.

In the few years we've been here, we achieved our first sellout in our last year at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and then last year our first year here at T-Mobile Arena, we achieved record attendance for this tournament with 87,000 fans attending the four days last year, and we had our first season sellout here and the largest crowd that we've ever had for one session of our basketball tournament, 19,000 last Friday night.

With the support of our partners at MGM, AEG Las Vegas Events, and our broadcast partners -- ESPN, Fox, and the Pac-12 Networks -- this event has really helped with the overall platform and showcase for our teams, and we've really made a lot of progress in terms of making it an event beyond what happens inside the arena, as evidenced by what's happening in Pac-12 Fan Plaza and really throughout the city.

For all these reasons, I'm pleased to be able to announce tonight that we're extending our agreement with Las Vegas for the men's tournament for an extra year. So we'll be here through 2020 with our men's tournament, and we're going to be moving the Pac-12 women's basketball tournament to Las Vegas starting next year for two years, for the 2019 and 2020 tournaments at least.

This will give us an opportunity to showcase the best of Pac-12 men's basketball and women's basketball over a two-week period. So the women's event will stay in its current date, which is the week before the men's tournament, followed by the men's.

Moving the women's event here was precipitated by some exciting things happening in Seattle with our partners there at Key Arena who are going to be going through what I'm told is about a $600 million renovation of that facility, as they get ready for a possible NHL franchise and other events that are there.

So we had to look for other options, and we didn't have to look very far, given the success that we've had here in Las Vegas, thanks to the help of our partners. There is a lot of excitement and enthusiasm amongst our women's basketball community to see how we can build upon now the six-year experience that we have here, the platform that we've built, the experience with our partners and the enthusiasm of our fans to hopefully benefit our women's basketball programs as well.

The 2019 women's event will be held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where we played the men's event previously, and the 2020 edition will be at Mandalay Bay, which happens to also be the venue for a WNBA franchise, which was one of the other reasons we're excited about Las Vegas. They have a commitment to women's basketball with the WNBA. And needless to say, a lot of exciting things going on here in the world of sports and entertainment.

But they're committed to women's sports, committed to women's basketball. They're going to have dedicated, full-time people working on promoting their WNBA franchise. Yeah, we're optimistic for this two weeks of Pac-12 basketball that will be here.

Looking at what's happening on the court. It's been a really exciting year for Pac-12 basketball. I can't recall a season that's been more wide open and close and unpredictable in terms of how our teams would wind up, and we've been looking forward to this tournament. We've had a lot of compelling games so far, including two overtime games yesterday. So the competition is not disappointing.

A lot to play for for several of our teams here that have come into this tournament with a chance to earn their way into the NCAA Tournament and earn good seedings. We've already seen it so far and looking forward to this evening's games as well as tomorrow and Saturday. There is a lot on the line for our teams. We've been very deep and competitive, and it's been very interesting to see the trajectory of our teams throughout the season. Pac-12 basketball is in a good place.

A few new things I wanted to highlight at this year's tournaments. You'll see that in year two here at T-Mobile Arena we've really taken more full advantage of being near the Strip and the Pac-12 Fan Plaza outside. One of the areas of excitement for us in being this venue was the big area outside adjacent to the strip. Last year we tested a few things in terms of fan entertainment. This year we came back and really leveraging the opportunity even more so there. Not just a band and cheer and other interactive activities, but Pac-12 Networks has a studio out there.

In fact, as I was getting ready to come in and see you all, I saw Nick Foles being interviewed out there. Something that wouldn't have happened if the hosts were back in San Francisco. So a great example of how the excitement that happens in the arena during the games is now translating outside to the Pac-12 Fan Plaza. It was great seeing Nick being interviewed by our hosts around a bunch of Arizona fans, and there was a lot of electricity and excitement.

So from my perspective that's a little peek as to what this event can really continue to become: Compelling, exciting basketball and entertainment inside the arena which can translate outside the arena throughout Las Vegas and certainly T-Mobile Arena.

We've also announced that tomorrow our Pac-12 Hall of Honor, our equivalent of the Hall of Fame, has got a new twist and is expanding in its scope. Historically the Pac-12 Hall of Honor has honored the legendary figures in the history of Pac-12 men's basketball. We had an experience last year after the Rio Olympics where we used the basketball tournament to honor some of the successful Olympians from the Rio Olympics.

The United States Olympic Committee wanted to promote the connection between collegiate sports and the Olympics, and we used the platform of our basketball tournament to honor some well-known Olympians from our schools. It was so well received by our university administrators, by fans, we brought the Olympians out on the court. We decided to use this event as a showcase for Pac-12 sports comprehensively, not just basketball.

So starting this year, the Pac-12 Hall of Honor will recognize legendary former student-athletes across all sports, men and women, starting tomorrow night. So we will have, amongst the 12 Hall of Honor nominees, 40 All-American honors, 36 NCAA team or individual championships as collegians. Eight of the Hall of Honor inductees you'll see tomorrow night have competed in the Olympics for the United States, and there will be six Gold Medal winners. So it's a pretty cool representation of the excellence across the board that you see in sports within the Pac-12. This event has now gotten to a point where it's a great platform and great showcase for Pac-12 overall.

Before I take your questions, let me spend a few minutes talking about something I've gotten asked about recently. The status of the work of the Pac-12 Task Force, looking into issues around youth basketball and recruiting. We announced in October at our Pac-12 Media Day that we were forming a task force shortly on the heels of reading about and hearing about the FBI investigations. Pac-12 leadership, our presidents, athletic directors are certainly very concerned about that and wanted to make sure as a conference we'd be on the forefront of examining the issues and pulling together great minds that we have access to in our conference to be part of coming up with solutions that could help improve the state of recruiting and youth basketball as it interacts with collegiate basketball.

So this group has been hard at work at various meetings. It's been a great cross-section of athletics administrators, former coaches, agents, an NBA general manager. We've got some experts in women's basketball and football and looking at implications in other sports. They've done some great work, and we've produced a set of findings and recommendations that I've had a chance to share informally with the NCAA commission led by Secretary of State -- Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that I'll be sharing more formally with the directors of the Pac-12 Conference, our presidents and chancellors on Saturday. This will be their first opportunity to review the findings and our recommendations. We'll get feedback from them.

Then shortly thereafter, based on their feedback, I expect we'll be releasing the findings. Sharing them certainly with the NCAA and their commission, but we'll also be sharing more of the details.

While I can't speak to the specifics of the recommendations now because they have not been vetted yet with our presidents and chancellors, and not formally approved, but I can share is that there are four baskets of recommendations. The first relates to NCAA eligibility and the NBA's one-and-done rule where we are certainly advocating for elite prospects to have a choice to go to the NBA or an enhanced G League out of college. So they are not forced, as they are now, by the NBA's rules to have to come to college and play in a collegiate system for a year. It's our sense that that would be an important step in terms of having more clarity of purpose and mission so that those young men that really solely focused on wanting to get paid to play basketball, they can go do that and they have more better options quicker without having to come through the collegiate system, and those that are interested in the tremendous benefits that higher education has to offer and being student-athletes and working toward a degree and all the other benefits that you get from that, they come to college sports.

We think there are some very positive analogs out there. Major League Baseball's rule where young phenoms can do just that. They can go right to the MLB or they can go to college. If they go to college, they're there for three years and they can be re-drafted.

It's been encouraging to see leaders in the game like LeBron James and Steve Kerr commenting recently about that, and I'm encouraged, because I think leading voices in the NBA are going to have to be part of helping come up with that solution and driving change in the NBA's eligibility rules.

Second area that we're going to recommend the NCAA look at significant reform around is recruiting rules and calendar and taking our coaches more away from recruiting through the AAU system and private promoters, shoe company-sponsored events, and trying to get more back to an education or scholastic-based environment for recruiting. High school coaches, an environment where there are college coaches, high school coaches working on skill development where they can evaluate there. We think important progress can be made by changing the environment within which coaches are recruiting.

We think education is an important piece of a set of solutions that we're recommending on a couple of different levels.

We're going to recommend that rules be liberalized in terms of when young men and their families can have access to agents and the advice that they can offer. Some of the problems that we're reading about have to do with families getting information and getting close to runners, middlemen because there aren't enough opportunities for them to get credible advice from college coaches, from agents earlier on in the process, as well as the NCAA. The NCAA and our schools we'd like to see be able to be involved in this proactively, and we think that's an important piece of it.

Then, I think the fourth big bucket will be around NCAA enforcement. The FBI allegations and the revelations from the U.S. Attorney's Office have certainly brought into focus some of the challenges the NCAA and their enforcement apparatus have. Certainly the FBI's got powers that the NCAA doesn't have, to be sure, but I think it's been a bit of a wake-up call for many leaders in college sports that there needs to be more resources thrown at NCAA enforcement, higher caliber, maybe some outsourcing of what they do, and we've got more details around that that will be in our proposals. But those are four of the key areas, not the only areas, but four of the key areas that we're going to be focusing on.

College basketball is really a fantastic sport. March Madness is certainly one of the greatest sporting events in our country, let alone the world. We certainly think it's incumbent upon the leaders in college sports to look at some of what we've read about and heard about, and are concerned about, and to have a bias for action and to find solutions to some of these problems.

So certainly on behalf of the Pac-12, our objective with this task force is to be an important part, an important leader in finding some of those solutions, working with other conferences and the NCAA's task force and many others.

I'll stop there and open it up to questions folks have on any of those topics or others.

Q. Just want to see if you have an update as far as some of these digital networks like YouTube and Hulu. Is it possible we'll see Pac-12 on any of those in the near future?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: Yeah, I certainly anticipate you'll see us continuing to add new streaming partners. It's still early days in the world of over-the-top, Sling, Fubo, are important partners that we have.

The great thing about that development is regardless of who your cable company is or satellite company, any Pac-12 fan, any school fan anywhere in the country can access via your device. So it's a little peek into the future.

Fans are going to have a lot more different options and packages. If you're wedded to a carrier that doesn't carry the Pac-12 Networks, you can get a package of channels on your device and get access to Pac-12 Networks. A lot of these are now offers in a way you don't have to sign up for multi-year contracts and some of the traditional barriers that fans have.

Our team, I know, is certainly in touch with others that are out there currently, other streaming offers, some of the ones that you mentioned, and there are new ones on the horizon all the time.

So, yeah, I think you'll see over the next few years Pac-12 Networks continue to be offered in more of those OTT packages.

Q. When you entered into the TV contract, it was pretty much uncharted waters. And as it's gone along, it is obvious there are some issues that need to be dealt with, specifically the starting times, game times, six-day windows, as well as the DIRECTV package. There is a lot of fan frustration that's led to declining attendance in the stadium. A lot of perception is there hasn't been enough pushback with the networks and the TV contracts and you're not doing enough to solve those issues. Is that fair because it's leading to a lot of frustration out there?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: I certainly understand the frustration. I'm sympathetic to concerns fans have in terms of from their perspective less than ideal game times, so that's something we try to be attentive to, I know our schools try to be attentive too. Probably helpful to separate the issues in terms of game times, which is, I think, primarily driven by our ESPN and Fox contracts. The DIRECTV issue really has nothing to do with ESPN and Fox. That's I think the frustration I hear from fans is they can't get Pac-12 Networks if they have DIRECTV and don't want to switch. Those are two very different sets of issues.

I'm glad you asked the question that way because I often read those issues getting confounded. So it's a good opportunity to clarify.

The number of nighttime games that we play and the windows we're in is largely driven by the deal we did in 2011 and Fox, where our priorities at the time were maximizing revenue and making sure we had national distribution for as many of our football and basketball games as possible.

There was an important focus on closing what was then a very significant gap. I think the Pac-12 was fifth of the six conferences in terms of revenue, and we were a very distant fifth in terms of media revenue compared to the others. Through a lot of due diligence and discussions with partners and with others, we made several changes to the conference in order to try to close that gap financially and get national exposure for our programs.

We expanded the conference. We added a football championship game, and importantly, we agreed to more flexibility in our -- in when we would play games. We went from a minimum of four weeknight football games to eight weeknight football games. Now we play Thursdays and Fridays.

We gave more flexibility to our broadcast partners in terms of when they could choose for us to play on Saturdays. In basketball, we're a conference that traditionally played Thursdays and Saturdays. In order to get back on ESPN, primarily, we agreed to play on Wednesdays and Thursdays, two windows each night, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., as well as Saturdays and Sundays.

Through all of these steps, we had a very, very dramatic increase in the revenue that we got from our current TV contracts. Which at the time not just closed the gap, leapfrogged all the other conferences.

And we got all of our football games, 44 football games, on Fox and ESPN all broadcast nationally. Previously many of them had been regionalized on ABC and Fox Sports Net.

In our basketball we were able to move off of FSN to largely on ESPN. We have 68 basketball games now on ESPN and Fox, and most of them are on ESPN available nationally.

So at the time we achieved a very, very dramatic increase in revenue and exposure through all of these steps.

There have been implications in terms of those steps that we made to be responsive to the great concerns our schools had about revenue gaps and exposure gaps. That got closed, created some other unintended consequences and concerns for fans.

So since then there have certainly been attempts to go back to ESPN and Fox to see how you could mitigate some of those concerns about nighttime games. But not surprisingly they agreed to do certain things as a result of that flexibility. So if you go back to them and say we'd like to take back some of that flexibility, from their perspective that doesn't necessarily make a lot of great business sense. Because, and this is also not always very well understood, the nighttime games in particular rate better in football, rate better than the daytime games for ESPN and for Fox.

The last report I got at the end of this last season on ESPN was I think 16% better, on ESPN2, 52% better. Why? Because during the day there is a lot of clutter. There is a lot of fragmentation with so many football games. We're the only major conference that is kicking off at 7 p.m. Pacific, 7:30. Of course there are less TV viewers nationally in total, but Pac-12 gets the lion's share.

So the business for our broadcast partners is they want as many good games in the evening as possible. That's where the tension lies. So we try to strike a balance. We've tried to mitigate the concerns, our schools. We hear from fans about the game times, but that's one of the primary reasons the broadcast partners agreed to do the things we asked them to do.

So there is not much more that really can be done between now and the end of the contract which would be 2024.

Leading up to that will be a good time, like we did before the last TV contracts to have a lot of discussions with our campuses about tradeoffs and what's going to be most important when we do our next television agreements. Maybe there will be a higher priority on different objectives than there were back in 2011 when it was primarily about catching up financially and getting national exposure.

The DIRECTV issue is really very narrow. Not related to ESPN or Fox. Frustration fans have that they don't carry our network and don't appear interested in carrying it any time soon. Our team I know has made great efforts. We've tried creative things. Tried to offer school assets for sponsorship and other things, but nothing has really gotten DIRECTV to the point where they've made even an offer for the network.

So I don't anticipate that we're going to be on DIRECTV anytime soon.

Fortunately, not only do we have 75 different carriers, but the over-the-top options that we talked about, fans anywhere in the country, if they want the Pac-12 Networks, they can get it. If they don't want to switch, they have these over-the-top options that they've got access to.

So that's where we are, and the world is changing very fast with new players coming in all the time. And I think every year that goes by there will be more different options our fans have, but I do certainly understand and I hear a lot about the frustration from DIRECTV customers that have not been compelled to switch yet.

Sorry for the long answer, but I often see some of these things confused, so it was a good opportunity for me to clarify.

Q. I was just wondering, in light of the task force you've got, what you think of the current situation at Arizona? Did you get involved at all when Sean Miller was out for five days and the administrators were discussing it?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: Pac-12 didn't have a direct role in that. It was really the school, the university leadership involved in responding to the media reports and the accusations. I had several conversations with the leadership of the university, trying to provide advice and council. Especially there is new leadership at Arizona, both at the president level and athletics director level.

So we've got compliance folks. We've got people very, very experienced in NCAA enforcement rules, and certainly those people were made available, and we tried to be there to help as much as possible.

But at the end of the day, that was really a school decision in terms of how to handle. As well, they consulted closely with the NCAA in terms of what to do especially on the player, any player eligibility issues. I think they worked through an NCAA protocol.

So I know that the leadership takes the issues very, very seriously. Spent a lot of time on it. They are spending a lot of resource on outside expertise and lawyers and trying to get as much information as possible. I know they're very focused on trying to do the right thing.

Q. Along those lines, if, say, Arizona and USC are in the championship game Saturday night, is there any concern out of the league office about what the perception of that may look like to the rest of the college basketball world?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: No, I'm not really concerned about that. You can only deal with the information in front of you. I know both the schools are, at the highest levels of the university, treating the allegations very, very seriously. Both those schools have taken concrete steps with assistant coaches, in the case of USC a player, that they deemed ineligible to play the whole year and has since left the school. Arizona obviously sat out their coach while they were investigating and looking into the situation.

There is no question in my mind that the leadership at the university is taking these issues very seriously and trying to take the appropriate steps with the information they have at the moment.

I know it's also a very challenging environment because some of the information we're reading about the schools don't necessarily have access to directly, but I know they're making every effort that I'm aware of to try to get as much information as they can.

Q. With regards to the one-and-done rule, what steps can the NCAA take or Pac-12 take to help influence some change on the NBA side of things?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: Well, certainly conversation and sharing perspectives and leadership of the NBA and the NBA Players Association. I know I've had conversations with the Commissioner and with the executive director and both have had conversations with Dr. Rice and the NCAA panel. So I think there is good dialogue going on here.

So, yeah, I think some of us have also tried to communicate that into really disabuse the possible notion that college might think one-and-done is a good thing. I certainly have been out there. I know others have, too, trying to make clear we would prefer the NBA change its rule and that college sports does not have young phenoms that are not interested in staying college for a while. Because I think there's been a -- sometimes a notion out there that it's a college rule, that it's an NCAA rule and that college just wants the biggest stars possible. I certainly believe college basketball would be healthier if it was reserved for students who value the education and are at the school for three years, like football players, like baseball players, and really making progress toward a degree.

There are some cases with one-and-done athletes that they actually leave school before their first year. So one-and-done is actually -- can be three-quarters and done, and I don't think that's a healthy thing for college. We've tried to make that clear and have had conversations with the NBA and the NBA Players Association about our thoughts on that and some other things the NCAA needs to do and colleges need to do, some of the things I outlined, to try to improve the environment.

And I believe there's a lot of thoughtful leaders at the NBA. Certainly, I think if I look at some of the NBA player leaders and coaches, it's as thoughtful a group of stars in any sport that I've seen in recent history. I think they could have a lot of influence on it. I think those thought leaders around the NBA and the players, I think there are many that really want what's good for basketball overall. They take a holistic view. Not just what's good for our GMs and how we recruit, where one-and-done is perfect, they love it, but I think there are some that take a more holistic view and realize that a lot of the names that are in the news and a lot of the athletes that are being talked about are their next-gen stars. And having controversy and turmoil and black clouds around some of these young athletes is not good for them and it's not good for the NBA.

So I'm hopeful that some of the leading players, as well as the leadership of the organizations, realize they would be better for basketball and certainly better for these young men to have a choice and get them to an enhanced G League or the NBA sooner.

Q. You've mentioned the investigation a couple times. Obviously it's a big thing hanging over the sport right now. As someone who is in charge of one of the power conferences, how concerned are you about the potential widespread nature of this and the fact that a couple schools have been caught up in it now, there is seemingly a possibility that more could be wrapped up in it at some point in the future?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: I'm very concerned about it. I think what we've been witness to over the last five, six months of these reports is that there is a challenge with the culture in youth basketball. Some of the commercialization and professionalization around youth basketball, and that's because a lot of these young men do have a lot of value, and they're trying to get to the league as soon as possible. When they get to the league, they're going to have a lot of value.

So there are people around them and their families trying to capitalize on that.

So I think it's incumbent upon us, and one of the reasons we formed the task force was to also educate leaders in college sports and our own conference on what's going on. So part of our task force report will be a lot of findings and examination of what's going on.

I also don't think there's any silver bullet answer to some of the problems because these issues start in youth basketball. There have been a lot of books written about it. There's been a lot that's been said about it. So I think it is incumbent upon all entities that care about basketball, and that's why I think the NBA, the Players Association, as well as the NCAA, our universities, maybe even USA Basketball and some others need to be involved in collectively finding solutions to some of these issues.

Q. How many teams do you anticipate getting in the tournament, and is there a concern with the bracketologist and that? There are some teams that have some impressive non-conference wins but didn't do well in conference that are seemingly getting more credit than teams that do well in the conference. Is there a perception problem with the conference in that regard?
COMMISSIONER LARRY SCOTT: I don't think so. Some of the teams in our conference have had extraordinary non-conference wins. I don't spend a lot of time looking at resumes of teams in other leagues. But I look at a team like Arizona State, for example. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a team in the country that challenged themselves going on the road, neutral sites, you know, playing the likes of Kansas and Xavier and winning those games.

I mean, I think their resume stacks up to any. I think the committee tries to encourage those types of schedules and winning those games.

They have found themselves in a very competitive conference schedule. They have a really strong non-conference resume, and then they've had their challenges during our conference season. But they're a great case where I think they've gotten a lot of respect.

You know, we'll see. There is a lot that the committee has to look at and consider, but I think they've got very strong cases as well. I think we're going to wind up with a good amount of teams in the tournament.

Obviously it still depends on some of what's going to happen here. But this has been a year for us where teams have really beaten each other up a lot. It's been pretty wide open. We're coming off a 2016-17 where we had seven teams in the tournament. Three Sweet Sixteen teams, a Final Four team last year.

So, I mean, I try not to overreact to any one year. I try to look at the trajectory, the growth, the trends, and I think a Pac-12 men's basketball is in a very strong place. No one sits on their laurels. We're always looking at a way to improve, as do our coaches and administrators.

But, in general, the conversation is very strong, I really like the group of coaches that we've got, the kind of recruits that we're getting. As I said, last year was really good, and I think we'll wind up with a good number this year. Certainly some teams that are close.

But I think on balance, as I look at their resumes, I think we'll get quite a few in.

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