Pac-12 commish: UCLA AD didn’t vote correctly on satellite camps
Washington State coach Mike Leach was right.
Following the NCAA Division I Council’s vote to ban satellite camps, Leach said 11 of the conference’s members wanted to keep satellite camps around. However, the conference, through UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, the conference’s representative, voted to ban the camps. He did not do what he was supposed to have done according to Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott.
“I think he’s clear he did not vote the way he was supposed to vote,” Scott said via ESPN. “We had 11 schools in our conference that wanted this looked at as we studied more comprehensively football recruiting issues – there’s a variety of them – but in the meantime we’d prefer the status quo, which for us allows coaches to attend other camps in other markets.”
Scott confirmed Leach’s comment that 11 of the teams didn’t support the ban. And while he didn’t name UCLA as the lone dissenter, he certainly didn’t rule the Bruins out as the one team supporting the ban telling people to draw their own conclusions.
Here’s an email Guerrero sent to other Pac-12 ADs explaining the reasoning behind his vote.
It’s important to note that the Pac-12’s vote did not seal the fate of satellite camps on its own. The vote was 10-5 in favor of the ban (votes from Power Five conferences count double), so the vote would have been 8-7 in favor of the ban if the Pac-12 sided with the minority.
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But things really get interesting when you couple the Pac-12’s vote along with the Sun Belt’s vote. Texas State AD Larry Teis voted for the Sun Belt in favor of banning the camps. His coach, Everett Whithers, is for the camps. Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson said a majority of the conference was pro-satellite camp, though he said Teis had the latitude to do what he wanted. Benson also justified Teis’ vote by saying it didn’t change the balance of the vote.
Well, had the Pac-12 also vote along with the majority of its members, the Sun Belt would have helped keep satellite camps around. Yeah, this whole thing is an absolute cluster.
So what’s next? Well, the discussion certainly isn’t going to go away. And don’t be surprised if some sort of compromise is figured out, if there isn’t an outright reversal of the ban within the 60-day override period (since the ban didn’t pass with an 85 percent majority, it can be overturned if 66.7 percent of FBS schools veto the measure). It’s clear that the interests of a few have dictated the outcome here. And while that’s not an uncommon occurrence in college football, the majority seems to be getting bigger and bigger.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
