Pac-12 to part ways with commissioner Larry Scott in June

The Pac-12 announced Wednesday that it has agreed to part ways with commissioner Larry Scott on June 30 and that a search for his replacement will begin immediately.

Scott’s contract was going to expire in 2022, but the conference said the decision to move on from him was made now to “allow a new commissioner to be in place to negotiate and maximize the Conference’s next important long-term media rights agreement.”

Scott has been commissioner since 2009, when he took over for Tom Hansen. Scott is responsible for expanding the conference to 12 schools by adding Utah and Colorado, moving the conference’s headquarters to San Francisco, and creating the Pac-12 Network, which has drawn plenty of criticism for its lack of accessibility.

Pac-12 schools have received less TV revenue than their Power 5 counterparts, part of the reason they have fallen behind in the arms race that is college sports.

In the last few years especially, the Pac-12 has seen a decline in the quality of its top two moneymaking sports—men’s basketball and football.

Scott was in charge of the Pac-12’s COVID-19 response, which saw the conference initially postpone its football season to the spring before reversing that decision and kicking off in November after all the other major conferences were already back in action.

Despite that, Scott was perennially the highest paid commissioner in college athletics.

You can read the conference’s full statement on his termination here.