Canzano: 'God bless Chip Kelly' -- but do the Pac-12 presidents care?

Former Utah AD sounds off about realignment.

UCLA’s Chip Kelly and USC’s Lincoln Riley hug after their game last season. Both depart for the Big Ten in 2024. (Photo: Naji Saker)

Chris Hill isn’t surprised that football consumes all the oxygen in the room when it comes to expansion talk. The former University of Utah athletic director knows where the money is buried in college athletics.

That said, isn’t it time someone in the Pac-12 Conference spoke up on behalf of the 5,000 athletes who play non-revenue generating sports?

Is it even safe to do so?

“God bless Chip Kelly,” Hill told me. “He did what was right. He made people think.”

UCLA’s football coach saw the conference splintering and wondered why football was dragging all the other campus sports along for the ride.

Kelly said: “Our sport is different than everybody else — we only play once a week, travel’s not a big deal for football, but it is a big deal in other sports.”

Hill, 72, spent more than three decades as the AD at Utah. He worked alongside former Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott and a line of conference presidents. In the last two weeks, Hill has been in communication with a number of troubled athletic directors and Olympic-sport coaches across the conference who aren’t happy about being disenfranchised.

So why hasn’t there been more public outcry on their behalf?

“ADs, coaches and players are not going to call out their president,” Hill told me. “If they’re whistleblowers they sure as hell aren’t going to announce their name in the paper. I don’t blame them for that. They’re in a precarious situation. It’s hard unless they’re a superstar coach.”

Kelly spoke up. Maybe because Gene Block, UCLA’s 75-year-old chancellor, is retiring next summer. Or because Kelly has five years and $31 million remaining on his contract. Or maybe because he’s Chip-bleeping-Kelly.

“I’m not being flippant about it,” Hill said. “You’ve got to be a person that supports football. If you start talking about other sports (as an AD) people say ‘Why are you doing that? It’s all just about football.’ I’ve talked to a couple of coaches, not just here (at Utah) that are petrified.

“I just don’t think they can come out and speak because they don’t want their president upset with them and the board of trustees would then be upset with the president if they have unhappy people,” he added.

Ugh.

That’s the dark side of university leadership, folks. They’re a bunch of really smart folks in the same sad boat, silently rowing toward a 200-foot waterfall while they count the money generated by football. Maybe it’s time some of them spoke up for the other sports like Kelly did.

Hill knows he sounds idealistic. But he wondered this week if the Pac-12 presidents might pump the brakes on wholesale departures and hold a candid conversation away from the ears of the television networks and conference commissioners.

“Do the presidents have the guts?” Hill said in a phone call.

The former Utah AD believes nothing is done until it’s done. He wondered if the departing schools might take a few million dollars less in annual media rights distributions and leave the non-revenue sports playing in the Pac-12.

The schools would save a significant amount of money in travel expenses. Could the conference’s network televise the games and generate a small amount of annual revenue, too? Is it a pipe-dream? Would it work? Might the Big Ten and Big 12 schools facing additional travel in those non-revenue sports breathe easier too?

Amid the maniacal focus on football has anyone even considered it?

“I think (expansion) happened so fast that I don’t know how a conversation about volleyball would get a second worth of interest,” Hill said. “Maybe you can go back and say ‘What do you guys think now that we rushed through it? We love where we are in football… but where are we with these other sports?”

Did the Pac-12 presidents think for a second about baseball, volleyball, women’s basketball and golf? Did they consider the travel strain on athletes who play tennis, soccer, softball and gymnastics? In the rush to cash in with FOX and ESPN did the Pac-12’s esteemed campus leaders bother to consider the words of Jordan Acker?

The Michigan regent unloaded on the Big Ten’s addition of four Pac-12 teams in 2024. Acker, an attorney, pointed out that realignment harmed student athletes. And that aside from the TV dollars none of it made sense.

“It’s utterly indefensible on any other grounds,” Acker wrote on social media. “Fact: It will take less time for our student athletes in non-chartered travel to go from Ann Arbor to London than it will to Eugene. Should we consider adding University College London to add another TV window?”

Don’t give them any ideas, pal.

Hill is all kinds of fired up right now, too. He knows the presidents of the departing Pac-12 schools won’t publicly face the music. But he’s asking them to get in the same room. No commissioners around. No TV execs permitted. No consultants or media present.

Let the meeting begin with a simple question, provided by Hill: “Do they feel they’ve done the best thing and fought the good fight for 5,000 non-football playing student-athletes? Could they be in a better position than they are today? Would they sit down without the commissioners and have that discussion?”

Do they have the guts?

Hill doesn’t think the conference’s ADs will go public, either.

“It'd be suicide for an AD to speak up against this thing right now,” he said. “It would be suicide. There’s zero motivation unless the people at the very, very top say ‘OK let’s take a breath and let’s just think about this without hurting the big picture.’”

There’s a pile of logic in what Chip Kelly said the other day. Football is different. The sport generates 80-85 cents of every media-rights dollar earned in college athletics. The teams play a half-dozen road games in the regular season. They travel by charter, eat grass-fed beef, sleep on Egyptian-cotton sheets, play the game and fly home immediately after.

Athletes who play other sports aren’t so blessed.

Hill and I talked twice this week. During that first call he blistered the Pac-12 presidents for not thinking about the non-revenue sports.

“Maybe I’m a dreamer,” Hill said, “but will any of these presidents actually go public and say ‘I give a s**t about women’s basketball?’”

The CEO of the Knight Commission called the departure of six Pac-12 schools a “tipping point” for college sports. Amy Perko said this week that she’d like university presidents to explain why the current structure of college athletics is still in the best interest of “all” Division I athletes in “all” sports.

Our old pal Chris Hill?

He just wants to know if the Pac-12’s presidents and chancellors give a damn about any of it. And if they do, are they willing to get in a room and talk about it? Is it too late?

“Nothing’s ever over,” Hill said.

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