Report: George Kliavkoff received $4 million, $500,000 bonus from Pac-12 in 2022

Former Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff received just under $4 million from the conference in 2022, according to a tax document provided by USA Today’s Steve Berkowitz.

That includes a $500,000 bonus received that year — which Berkowitz pointed out was the same year that UCLA and USC announced that they would be leaving that Pac-12 in favor of the Big Ten.

Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 “mutually agreed to part ways,” in February of 2024 after all but two teams opted to leave the conference for other Power Five options. The conference has since named Teresa Gould to replace Kliavkoff in the hopes of rebuilding the conference.

While it will be unclear how much Kliavkoff will receive in severance pay until this fiscal year’s tax documents are available for public consumption, and the conference did not explain how severance pay would be distributed or where that money would be coming from.

Kliavkoff’s departure may be considered a liability, which could be get Washington State and Oregon State out of paying the entire bill. When WSU and OSU settled out of their lawsuit against the 10 departing Pac-12 schools in December of 2023, a statement was released noted that the “departing schools have agreed to forfeit a portion of distributions over the remainder of the 2023-2024 year and provide specific guarantees against potential future liabilities.”

It remains to be seen how that will look like moving forward.

Larry Scott, who Kliavkoff replaced after the end of his tenure in June of 2021, also received compensation from the conference during in 2022 as well. The Pac-12 paid Scott amounts totaling over $2 million including $1.5 million in severance pay and an additional $750,000 in what the document refers to as “bonus and incentive pay.” He also continued to benefit from the nearly $2 million relocation load from the was hired in 2009.

Money aside, the Pac-12 will be looking a lot different moving forward. Since the outgoing teams made their moves official, Washington State and Oregon State have former a scheduling partnership with the Mountain West Conference for football, as well as an affiliate membership agreement with the West Coast Conference.

Leading the charge, Gould is entrusted with the monumental task of rebuilding the conference from the ground up. Losing teams like Oregon, USC, UCLA, Stanford and Washington — names that are synonymous with the Pac-12 — have hit the conference hard, but whether or not a merger with another conference or simply plucking teams from other is the answer to it’s abrupt rebuild remains to be seen.