Canzano: Are we talking about the same Larry Scott?
Is the LPGA dumb enough to hire him?
I have to hand it to Larry Scott. The former Pac-12 Conference commissioner was tone deaf and elitist. He was socially awkward and out of touch. Scott’s staff hated him by the end of his tenure, and his fingerprints were all over the eventual downfall of the 109-year-old conference. But if he did one thing especially well, it was managing up.
Scott is a Harvard-educated tennis player. He plays a deft game from the baseline, cultivating the key sycophants capable of helping him stay employed. President Ed Ray at Oregon State backed the guy. So did Michael Crow at ASU and Gene Block at UCLA. Scott played the Pac-12 CEO Group like a small-town orchestra while he raked in more than $50 million in salary over the years.
Annika Sorenstam sounded like one of those old-school Pac-12 presidents this week. She backed Scott as a candidate for the next LPGA commissioner, glowing about his “great relationships” with sponsors and “the gravitas to command respect” when he enters the room.
Sorenstam’s comments came in a written statement to SBJ. Forgive me, but it felt suspiciously like a public relations campaign. I watched Scott operate up close for more than a decade. I won’t be surprised if it turns out that Scott hired a publicist, and the endorsement of a golf legend was part of the campaign.
Relationships?
Respect when he enters the room?
Long-time Pac-12 staffers are going to roll their eyes at that one. They shake their heads when they recall how Scott alerted everyone during the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament in March 2017 in Las Vegas that a “major announcement” was coming.
Staff members buzzed with anticipation and speculated that Scott had finally closed the Pac-12 Network’s long-awaited distribution deal with DirecTV. The lack of distribution was a long-standing frustration for fans and schools.
Soon enough, a video was distributed to employees via email featuring Scott, in a solo shot, with the Las Vegas strip behind him on a green screen.
His big news?
The commissioner announced that he was getting a five-year contract extension. Scott was delighted. He informed his staff that they’d get to continue the work they’d started through 2022.
The whole thing fell flat. Particularly with low-tier staff members living in downtown San Francisco, some two or three to a high-rent apartment.
Relationships?
Respect?
The conference athletic directors are going to fall over when they hear that. I’ll never forget how dejected the Pac-12’s ADs sounded late in Scott’s tenure. The commissioner was busy living large, flying about the country in a private aircraft, staying in five-star hotels, and working from a downtown San Francisco office building that cost the conference more than $92 million in rent over 11 years.
Scott’s base salary was more than double what Greg Sankey was paid as the commissioner of the SEC. He justified the double-dip by convincing his bosses that he was doing the work of two CEOs — both as a conference commissioner and the head of a media company.
By early 2019, Scott’s act had grown tired with ADs who were stretched thin financially and watching peer conferences pull away. They were on tight budgets, but the Pac-12’s executive team had no travel expense policy. Scott conducted himself like the CEO of a Bay Area tech company.
The ADs met with Scott in January 2019 at the NCAA convention in Florida and requested an audit of the Pac-12 budget.
Scott refused.
One AD told me: “We’re not trying to be difficult. We’re just in cost-containment mode, and there are some who want to compare the financials of our conference and others.”
Scott said that only his bosses — the Pac-12 chancellors and presidents — could ask for an audit. The scene reminded the Pac-12 athletic directors of a meeting five years earlier in Las Vegas when long-time Utah AD Chris Hill engaged with Scott in a terse exchange. Hill, dissatisfied with revenue, pressed Scott on the financials of the conference. He was cut off by the commissioner.
Scott sniped: “You’re lucky for what you get.”
Relationships?
Respect?
Is Sorenstam talking about the same Larry Scott?!?
The Scott who stayed in a villa at Aria Resort and Casino with 24-hour butler service and a marble jacuzzi soaking tub while his conference was bleeding out?
The Scott who ran off the Pac-12’s respected head of football officials, Tony Corrente?
The same commissioner that allowed General Counsel Woodie Dixon to trample the conference’s instant replay protocol?
The Scott who manipulated his bosses into giving him an interest-free loan of $1.86 million when he was hired in 2009? The guy who didn’t settle that loan until 2024?
That Larry Scott?
The guy at the conference helm when the Pac-12 received millions in overpayments from Comcast for a decade? Turns out Pac-12 executives learned of the problem in 2017 but didn’t alert Comcast. I doubt Scott would have gotten the contract extension in March of 2017 if the overpayment scandal had been public.
There must be some mistake here. Because when Sorenstam brought Scott up as a candidate, I thought about the time the former Pac-12 commissioner wrote a letter to his employees. He informed them the conference’s long-standing policy of giving every employee two Rose Bowl tickets as a holiday bonus was ending.
He cited a shortage of Rose Bowl tickets. The employees were disappointed but mostly understood. But staff grew furious later when they found out that Scott gave complimentary Rose Bowl tickets to a group of parents on his son’s soccer team.
Great relationships?
The gravitas to command respect?
If the LPGA is dumb enough to hire Larry Scott, it deserves him.
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Well done, John. This piece needs to be blasted out to the LPGA world and beyond! Caveat emptor.
We live in an era where a convicted felon can be elected President, so I guess it's not all that shocking Lavish Larry could land himself a sweet gig despite his track record.