Ratto: Tough talk from Pac-12 boss Scott

Aug. 18, 2011
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Ray Ratto
CSNBayArea.com
Larry Scott doesnt necessarily look like a mobster. I mean, who does? They come in all shapes and sizes and from all backgrounds, no matter what Jimmy Cagney might have thought.But when he snapped on former Miami athletic director Paul Dee, who helped bring the NCAA hammer down on Southern California while knowing about the charnel house the UM athletic department had become, you could detect the accent and the inflection of a classic movie gangster.But lets Babel Fish it for you first. Here were the words Scott used, via the Los Angeles Times Gary Klein:If the allegations prove true, the words irony and hypocrisy don't seem to go far enough.And heres the translation:
You clipped one of my captains in my territory. You know what happens next, dont you? You wont get it today, or tomorrow, but youll get it, and itll be way worse than this.And it will.Dee was working for the NCAAs police wing at the time, and helped recommend the hammer for USC based on (a) its complicity and willful ignorance and (b) resisting NCAA arrest by stonewalling, thumbing its nose at the NCAA and acting, well, like USC acts in all the caricatures of USC.And Scott, who has become a college sports power broker through the grab on two schools he didnt really want and a TV deal he really did, isnt going to let this stand. If he wasnt already a militant on substantive change in college sports, he is now.And substantive change at this point means regarding the NCAA as the old world order.Scott, in fact, already helped put the boot in when he did the Pac-12 TV deal, because it helped pry open the NCAAs hegemony on big-money TV deals. It started when Notre Dame and NBC did their first deal in 1991, but didnt really blow up until the Southeastern Conferences mega-contract with CBS.Other deals have happened since then, but those were the signposts that convinced the individual schools that the NCAA wasnt the only sugar daddy on the block.And what we know from the good old days is that if you cant keep the folks on the ground happy, theyll find someone who does.And in this case, theyve found themselves.The evolution of business is that the big eat the small, but the NCAAs strength has been with the numbers that come from representing more than 1,000 schools. The big schools, who generate the most individual revenue but liked the NCAA money just as well, are learning to find ways to generate their own streams, rivers, lakes and oceans of cash on their own, and they have come to the same conclusion independently:What do we need them for?This almost surely represents Scotts thinking on the subject, and the finger in the eye his biggest provider took at the hands of the group that hired an AD who knew about the sleazy things going on in house serves as a fresh reminder to Scott that, well, what DOES he need them for?This is about power -- raw, naked power. Scott also said he would be more than amenable to an outside compliance source, which would strip away even more of the NCAAs administrative muscle. And if the NCAA isnt either an effective bag man or a source of fear, in these hard, mean times of revenue redistribution from the top to the tippy-top, that question is ringing in Scotts head even louder.But thats what happens when one of your captains gets iced on your ground. It gets you to start thinking not in terms of cooperating, but contracting. And these are bloody times in college athletics.And if you dont believe that, the Biography Channel has lots of hour-long shows about the early 1930s that will straighten you right out on that.Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com.