Former Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff Received a $500,000 Bonus Amid USC, UCLA Departure
Despite being out of a job following the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, former league commissioner George Klaivkoff remains a notable person to watch in the world of college athletics.
While some believe that all publicity is good publicity, for Kliavkoff, this may not be the case. According to a tax report from the USAToday’s Steve Berkowitz, the former Pac-12 Commissioner received a $500,000 bonus from the Pac-12 in 2022, the same year that USC and UCLA elected to depart the league.
After Klaivkoff failed to land a media rights deal for the league, conference members started to depart following USC and UCLA’s 2022 exit from the Conference of Champions. Colorado was the next team to jump ship, electing to return to the Big 12 Conference on July 27th, 2023. Eight days later, Washington and Oregon announced their decision to join the Big Ten, while the remaining “Four Corner” schools, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah, joined the Big 12. Two of the league’s final four members (Cal and Stanford) departed for the ACC on September 1st, 2023, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the last remaining members.
A large portion of the Pac-12’s struggles to obtain a media rights deal stemmed from Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark leap-frogging the Pac-12 and extending the Big 12’s media rights deal. Kliavkoff then botched a pitch for Pac-12 athletics to make its debut on AppleTV, which pushed the remaining league members to pursue other possibilities.
While technically, anyone can get a raise, the Pac-12 giving Kliavkoff an extra half of a million bucks to watch the league crumble may just take the cake for the worst decision of the year.
