Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff forecasts changes across NCAA over next few years

In July of 2021, George Kliavkoff assumed the role of the commissioner of the Pac-12. Since taking over the conference, Kliavkoff has seen a plethora of changes and issues that have come up throughout the entirety of the NCAA.

Recently, Kliavkoff sat down with The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach to talk about his first year as the Pac-12 Commissioner, as well as forecast how the next few years could look across the NCAA.

On one hand, Kliavkoff understands that the NCAA has a number of topics being discussed currently, from NIL to the transfer portal to conference realignment to College Football Playoff expansion. All of those things grouped together has created a tough state of affairs for leaders across college athletics in itself.

“The one thing I’ll leave you with is this: I think two things are going on,” Kliavkoff told Auerbach. “One is, there’s this set of a half-dozen incredibly complex, interesting issues that are facing college athletics, like name image and likeness, transfer portal, conference realignment, the NCAA constitutional convention, the fallout from Alston, CFP expansion.”

Kliavkoff on how these NCAA issues have impacted leadership

In addition to all of the ongoing issues across the NCAA, Kliavkoff pointed towards the looming leadership changes that are set to occur over the next couple of years and those that have already happened in recent years. In addition to current NCAA president Mark Emmert being on his way out, other conferences are going to be seeing new leadership soon.

Leadership changes paired with the issues in the NCAA create a massive opportunity to completely “rethink college athletics,” Kliavkoff said.

“There are all these really meaty issues that are occurring at the same time that we’re having historic turnover in the leadership among college athletics,” said Kliavkoff. “Within a three-year timeframe, we will have the replacement of four of the five Power 5 commissioners and the president of the NCAA.

“The combination of those two things creates a unique, I would argue, generational moment in time for us to rethink college athletics and to collectively decide what’s important to us and to reset some of the rules and the ways that we do business — and address that.”

Moving forward, it is going to take a collective effort for leaders across the NCAA to come together and find feasible and fair solutions to all of the current topics being debated and discussed. While it has been hard for people to “get along” and come together to make decisions, Kliavkoff doesn’t think they have a choice moving forward.

“I think they’re going to have to,” he added.