Pac-12 Conference Media Days – Commissioner Larry Scott Update

Pac-12 Conference Media Days kicked off this week at the Warner Brothers Lot in Burbank California, Commissioner Larry Scott had some important announcements to make.

In a Pac-12.com press release sent out today to the media, Larry Scott talked about the updates for the conference and where it’s heading as well as changes the Pac-12 is going to make for fans and athletes stating “We’ve made important progress.”

The changes are positive for athletes, starting this year according to Scott, they’ll be:

1. Increasing scholarship awards to take into account the full cost of attendance.
2. Guaranteeing four-year athletic scholarships and providing assistance to former student-athletes who choose to come back and complete their degrees.
3. Making progress in ensuring student-athletes who are injured while playing sports get the medical care they’ve deserve even after they’ve left school.

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Wow! Now we need to see the details, what does he mean by the “full cost of attendence?” Need to delve more into what is covered now and what will be covered. Does that mean unlimited food? Weekend expenses? Stipend for clothes, jackets, flip-flops, etc.? I wonder what they aren’t going to cover, I am betting tattoo’s are not on the list.

Any athlete that leaves school early will be able to come back and complete their degrees.  As we know, Jason Terry’s jersey number ’31’ was retired last basketball season.  That could not happen without Terry earning his degree.  It sounds like the Pac-12 is going to make that process easier. That’s nice..wonder if there is a catch somewhere.

Arizona Wildcats

Number three is huge!  This covers athletes who get injured and their college and professional careers are finished. Now they will still be taken care of.

But wait..there’s more for football, the Pac-12 has:

1. Added spotters to better identify head trauma in realtime.
2. Medical staff and athletic trainers are sharing important data to track and fully analyze all sports injuries.
3. The Pac-12 conference is unique in spending $3.5 million dollars a year to conduct research on head trauma, mental illness, and other health and safety issues affecting our student athletes.

This is a given in my book, there should be money for this in every budget for any sports program.  Happy it’s happening in college sports. So far I am impressed with what I am hearing.

The Pac-12 fan’s are left out either, Scott mentions them as well:

“For the first time this year, with the help of new technology, fans in our stadiums will watch replay reviews on the video board as our officiating crews are reviewing the plays in their booth.”

Scott has busy at work making international relationships as well, as far as China:

“We’re reaching out to the Pacific Rim, and that is a logical extension of our growth, and it compliments our universities initiatives around athletics, academics, alumni relations and strategic partnerships we already have in China and in other countries..The Pac-12 will make history this November with a regular season basketball game in Shanghai, between the Washington Huskies and the Texas Longhorns.”

Scott has hired a new Director of Officiating for the Pac-12, and he is the “former NFL director of officiating, David Coleman, who will now be a full-time employee at the conference..expect more transparency from our programs with the media, more use of pool reporters and more officiating segments on the Pac-12 Networks.”

“We are delighted that our good partner AT&T successfully acquired DIRECTV”-Larry Scott

I am wondering how to get myself into the “Pool.”

The “pool of reporters” got their chance to ask questions, and my number one question would have been about the Pac-12 channel and access for DIRECTV and DISH customers since this is a complaint I have tweeted and called about several times as I am sure ton of Wildcats fans has as well…it was the third question asked and here is the question and answer in its entirety:

"Q. Do you have a better gauge of how the Pac-12 Network will be distributed now that the DIRECTV, AT&T deal has gone through? LARRY SCOTT: Yeah, we are delighted that our good partner AT&T successfully acquired DIRECTV. We’ve been looking forward to this because we have an excellent relationship with AT&T, have now for a couple of years. They’re a partner of all of our schools. They’re a partner of the conference. Their video service, AT&T U-verse distributes the Pac-12 Networks.They’re delighted with it, and obviously, they’ve now got to digest a $49 billion dollar acquisition, but I’m confident we’ll be a priority, and there will be discussions that take place hopefully very soon. I’m optimistic that we’ll have positive conversations. I can’t predict what may happen when because those conversations have not been able to take place heretofore. But I’m delighted for our partners, delighted for us."

I attempted to pull out the highlights from Scotts update for you today even though you’ll probably need to re-read it a bunch of times to get it all.  Please feel free to pass the link to this article to all your Pac-12 friends, ZonaZealots would really appreciate it!

Oh, one last thing, the Pac-12 is celebrating 100 years in existence this year and they have developed a new fabulous logo which you will be seeing a lot of.  We will have more on that soon.

Until then…Beardown Pac-12 Wildcats fans!

Logo courtesy of Pac-12.com

Next: Arizona Wildcats to Win the Pac-12 South, Why not?