George Kliavkoff clears the air about speculation regarding the Pac-12's demise

The Pac-12 suffered a monumental setback a year ago when longstanding Los Angeles area powerhouses USC and UCLA were swiped from underneath their nose by the mighty Big Ten, leaving the Pac-12 in a bit of an awkward state as a new media rights deal stared them in the face over the last 12 months. Well, here we are a little over a month before actual football kicks off and the league still doesn’t have its long-term media rights deal in place, nor has it made any moves to expand once the Bruins and Trojans depart.

During his opening remarks at Pac-12 Media Days, conference commissioner George Kliavkoff assured fans that a media deal is coming and so are expansion talks. He’s spoken very rarely on the issues throughout the last year and even his update at Media Days provided little information of substance.

With Kliavkoff and the conference’s own lack of communication on the media rights deal and expansion, Pac-12 fans and national college football fans have begun to wonder if the league is in a stable spot going forward. Those concerns were brought up to Kliavkoff as he took questions, with one reporter asking him why he and the league haven’t spoken publicly on the issues much over the last year.

Here was Kliavkoff’s full explanation following that question:

“Yeah, I could have spent all of the last year getting into a he-said, she-said on every single rumor that’s been passed about our conference. We decided to take the high road. We decided to focus on the future of the conference, that’s why we haven’t engaged.”

Kliavkoff also emphasized that he doesn’t want to make a distraction of the whole ordeal and negatively impact the conference’s recruiting.

“And what I will tell you is that when you think about the effect that that might have on our schools, of not being in the public everyday talking and defending ourselves — you know, for me, the real concern was… is it going to affect our recruiting? Are we going to lose potential student-athletes because of that? Because of some uncertainty. And I will tell you that our recruiting has never been stronger and it kind of reinforced the decision to not engage in that and to stay with the high road.”

So, mostly more of the same from Kliavkoff, meaning he hasn’t provided sure answers to any of the big picture questions with the conference, namely its future media deal and potential expansion. However, he says there’s a plan and a deal will be in place soon, so be on the lookout for that, Pac-12 supporters.