George Kliavkoff Q&A: New Pac-12 commish 'impatient' with league's football failures
I called George Kliavkoff on Sunday afternoon after he had returned from Pasadena to his home in Las Vegas, hoping for a candid postmortem of his first football season as Pac-12 commissioner. I asked the first question, and Kliavkoff did not stop talking for 13 minutes.
"Obviously, this has been weighing heavy on me," he said with a chuckle.
He had plenty to get off his chest after attending Saturday's Rose Bowl, where he watched Utah cough up a 14-point halftime lead in a 48-45 loss to Ohio State.
The Utes' late collapse brought the Pac-12's bowl record to 0-5 and the league's mark against other Football Bowl Subdivision teams to an abysmal 9-23.
Our conversation began with Kliavkoff's fresh take on yet another forgettable Pac-12 football campaign and the systemic flaws he has identified that continue to keep the league a national afterthought. It ended with detailed discussion of the drama of College Football Playoff expansion, how the Rose Bowl can maintain its venerable place in the sport within its new format and USC's hiring of Lincoln Riley.
You have made it very clear from the get-go that football success was a major priority for you. What have you learned from observing this first season?
George Kliavkoff: Well, I think the learning from the season is that we've got a lot of work to do. We evaluated our nonconference performance, and it's statistically our worst since 1983. Obviously, that wasn't helped at all by the unfortunate results in all of our bowl games. For me, that just means we have lots of work ahead of us, and it starts tomorrow. I'm looking forward to digging in.
I think there are some overarching issues that are kind of beyond our control that contributed, and I don't mean this as an excuse for the on-field performance. But I do think we operate in some of the most restrictive states when it comes to Covid protocols, and I think that that had a significant negative effect on the field last year, and I think there was certainly a hangover and carryover this year from that. Early in the season, we
