George Kliavkoff at Pac-12 Media Day in 2022. Jul 29, 2022; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff speaks during Pac-12 Media Day at Novo Theater. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
NCAABy Andrew Bucholtz on

While there are plenty of vicious moves in college conference realignment, it’s rare to see conference commissioners openly discuss that another conference might be a target for them to raid. That’s at least partly what Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff did at Pac-12 Media Day Friday, though. A reporter asked Klaivkoff a question of “What gives you confidence that the 10 remaining schools are going to stay in this conference?”, following a prelude that referenced an “open for business” comment from Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and a comment from Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren that that conference might look to expand further as well (after previously taking USC and UCLA from the Pac-12). And Kliavkoff responded with quite the remark about Yormark’s comment:

A George Kliavkoff quote.

Here’s video that aired on ESPN’s SportsCenter Friday of both that question and answer from Kliavkoff, as well as a later question and answer:

The second question there is “Do you think the days of trying to be collegial when it comes to expansion are over?” That led to quite the response from Kliavkoff:

“I hope they’re not over, but they’re certainly harmed. That remark was a reflection of the fact that I’ve been spending four weeks trying to defend against grenades lobbed in from every corner of the Big 12, trying to destabilize our remaining conference. I understand why they’re doing it. When you look at the relative media value between the two conferences, I get it, I get why they’re scared. I get why they’re trying to destabilize us. I was just tired of that. Yeah, that’s probably not the most collegial thing I’ve ever said.”

Twitter had quite the reactions to Kliavkoff’s remarks. Some saw his discussion here as a sign of insecurity, especially with his claim that the Pac-12 media rights are stronger (they are not currently in terms of per-school distributions, and it’s unclear what both conference’s media rights will look like in the next round with so much uncertainty about who’s even in each conference):ere’s the specific discussion of “grenades”:

https://twitter.com/tom_turner00/status/1553076698379337729

Others weren’t impressed with his specific target of the Big 12:

And some took exception to his claim that now is when “collegiality” has been lost, considering some of the nastiness in previous rounds of realignment:

But there were also just a lot of comments on how rare it is to see a sitting commissioner publicly target a specific other conference as a potential source of expansion:

We’ll see what this leads to for Kliavkoff and the Pac-12.

[Awful Announcing; photo from Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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