SAN FRANCISCO - Ken Lucida worked as an instant-replay official for the Pac-12 Conference and drew the assignment for the high-stakes 2013 game between then-No. 5 Stanford and No. 14 Washington.

Lucida and his communicator, Glen King, were in Palo Alto and the game was sailing along with the Cardinal ahead 31-28 late in the fourth quarter. Suddenly, on fourth-down and 10 on their final possession, Huskies quarterback Keith Price rolled right and threw a pass, low and apparently caught by a diving receiver Kevin Smith. It was ruled a completion and a first down on the field near the Cardinal sideline.

In the instant-replay booth at the stadium, Lucida wanted a closer look.

"I looked at the initial replay and couldn't see it," he said. "I asked for another angle. Then, another. I finally got the shot I needed, and I could see the tip of the ball hit the ground. It was incomplete.

"I overturned the call on the field."

Stanford took possession and won the game.

LEFT OUT

From officiating issues to high operating costs to being left out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight year, the Pac-12 Conference is facing a multitude of problems.

This is part four

in a four-part series that takes a deeper look at what is ailing the conference.

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The following day, Lucida was at lunch with a friend when his cellular telephone rang. On the phone? Woodie Dixon, the Pac-12's general counsel, and Lucida said Dixon was upset and wanted to know why the replay official overturned the call.

"I told him it was in my game report," Lucida said. "I was 100 percent sure we got it right. Woodie had already called my partner (King) and he was now calling me. He shouldn't have even been talking to us. He should have been talking to Tony Corrente, the supervisor of officials."

Then-UW coach Steve Sarkisian was upset, and Huskies administrators and fans were, too. Dixon was fielding angry calls from Seattle. Lucida said he believes Dixon called him that day to express his own frustration with having to deal with the fallout after a controversial replay decision.

"There wasn't a lot of support from upper management," Lucida said.

The Pac-12 did not bring Lucida back for the 2014 season.

Just weeks into that season Corrente walked off the job, mid-year.

"Tony told me, 'Now you know what I deal with,'" said Lucida, who lives in the Bay Area and still works part-time in the NFL as an instant-replay assistant.

Corrente, still a full-time game official in the NFL, declined comment for this series. He is prohibited by his contract from granting an interview.

When asked if Dixon had interfered with other officiating decisions, a Pac-12 Conference spokesperson referred to a release sent out in October by the Pac-12 after its review of the Sept. 21 incident when Dixon overruled a targeting call during the USC-Washington State game.

"Woodie Dixon's call into the Conference's centralized replay center during the targeting call in question was a mistake and influenced the replay officials' decision," the statement said, "though it also found the influencing of a replay decision was an isolated incident."

Dixon's continued presence means the specter of that overturned call won't fade. He was working just a few feet away from the instant-replay command center as recently as a few weeks ago in downtown San Francisco.

Said Lucida: "I saw Woodie involved himself in that (Sept. 21) USC-Washington State game this season. I'm here to tell you, this isn't new. This goes way back. It's not current. Woodie Dixon has been involved in a lot of different ways.

"This kind of stuff went on constantly. I'm glad it went public, but I thought it would have happened sooner."

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The Pac-12 Conference athletic directors have long wanted answers.

They've charted conference expenses. They've asked questions about revenue disappointments. They've even wondered why the Pac-12 is headquartered in downtown San Francisco.

At a meeting held in Las Vegas in 2014 between Pac-12 Conference commissioner Larry Scott and his athletic directors, Utah athletic director Chris Hill was asking questions, when several ADs who were in the room said the commissioner suddenly cut Hill off. Scott had a stern message for the ADs in the room who were dissatisfied.

Scott announced: "You're lucky for what you get."

The athletic directors in the room didn't feel very lucky.

In a four-part series that focuses on leadership of the Pac-12 Conference, The Oregonian/OregonLive documents lavish spending by the conference headquarters. That includes top-tier executive salaries, steep travel expenses, and more than 100,000 square footage of commercial real estate in the most expensive footprint in the country.

The series reveals how the culture at the conference headquarters affects the brand. It lays out the unfortunate steps that led to the troubling Dixon-involved instant-replay scandal that rocked the 2018 football season and eroded public trust. And the series reveals the power structure inside the Pac-12 CEO Group, which holds the keys to Scott's tenure.

It also compares the Pac-12 Conference's annual distributions to its members with those from other Power Five Conferences and demonstrates how that inequity has placed the conference football programs at a competitive disadvantage.

The Pac-12 Conference football programs will be shut out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight season and the third time in five years.

Not accidental say ADs, coaches and analysts.

Hill retired last spring after 31 years working for a university he still loves. In the wake of this series, he's publicly calling for an internal investigation into the conference's expenditures. It's a cry for help that Hill and other Pac-12's ADs tried on more than one occasion to make directly to Scott.

"When we have an expenditure or make a hire everybody knows it," Hill said. "If I can't defend it, I'm in trouble. If we had an extra half a million or million dollars to spend, I'd have to defend where I spent that."

A lack of transparency is a glaring issue for the conference.

When asked for financials of the conference, Andrew Walker, the vice president of communications for the Pac-12, refers reporters to the Pac-12's Form 990 tax filing. The Pac-12 is a tax-exempt organization and, by law, must report expenditures, assets and revenues annually. But a 10-month delay in filing and a limited scope of information on the document serve as a smoke screen.

Multiple conference athletic directors say they're frustrated. Scott does share the conference financials at his annual meetings on a PowerPoint presentation. But he doesn't issue handouts to the ADs, and doesn't leave the data on the screen long enough for them to do a thorough examination.

Its like a briefing featuring classified documents.

One former Pac-12 athletic director said of Scott: "He couldn't care less about the athletic directors. His allegiance is to the three big shots - Michael Crow (ASU), Ed Ray (Oregon State) and Gene Block (UCLA).

"The other ones either don't care or don't understand or there's a lot of transition on their campus so they aren't as engaged."

The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors make up the Pac-12 CEO Group. Crow, Ray and Block are the only three original university leaders who remain since Scott was hired in 2009. No matter how frustrated fans are, no matter how disenchanted ADs are, no matter how helpless the football coaches feel, the ultimate fate of the conference rests with them.

Do university leaders feel lucky for what they have?

Scott has brought vision to the conference headquarters. It operated as a "Mom and Pop" shop under former commissioner Tom Hansen. Scott engineered the formation of the Pac-12 Networks. He pushed for deeper relationships with technology companies. And he's positioned the Pac-12 for a potential payday in 2024 when its digital and broadcast rights are available for bid.

It raises a question: Would the Pac-12 ever sell its prized television network?

One executive-level insider believes it's the only path out of the woods for the conference. Giving up control of the network and selling to AT&T, Verizon, Facebook or Amazon might result in a Pac-12 payday that would level the playing field. Then again, control of the network has long been a point of pride for the conference. Could the university presidents and Scott ever look anyone in the eyes again if it gave up control?

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The erosion of the Pac-12's brand -- and trust -- are at a breaking point.

Washington State athletic director Patrick Chun and head football coach Mike Leach were so troubled on Tuesday night when the College Football Playoff Rankings were released, they talked and decided to take matters into their own hands.

Chun and Leach gave an interview with USA Today in which they lobbied the playoff selection committee, pointing out that WSU is the only 10-win team coming from a Power Five Conference that isn't ranked in the top seven, among other facts. The move raised eyebrows among some because the playoff committee protocol is designed to funnel such pleas only through the conference offices.

It was telling that WSU didn't trust the Pac-12 alone to make its case.

The Cougars are the program most affected by the league's Sept. 21 instant-replay scandal. They lost that game to USC by three points. That conference general counsel Dixon interfered with the instant-replay process during that loss, and wasn't terminated on the spot, remains a topic of discussion on campus in Pullman, Washington.

"What happened that night is about to rear its ugly head," one current Pac-12 AD said.

The winner of the Pac-12 championship game between Utah and Washington will go to the Rose Bowl. But unless Washington State improves its ranking and slips into the Top 12 or higher in the final playoff rankings on Sunday night, the Pac-12 is going to have only one participant in the New Year's Six bowl games.

"We just kind of felt like we had enough and needed to speak out," Chun told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday. "We have 10 wins. We're in a league that requires nine conference games, that should have been for the benefit.

"Mike's done one of the best coaching jobs, start to finish. The manner in which we've won games, we've not been blown out. We had two close losses, and one of those led to a change in the instant-replay policy in the conference."

It was a public missive one might expect from a conference commissioner, scorching the earth and trying to get the attention of the committee. But it wasn't coming from Scott at the San Francisco headquarters. It was coming from the first-year athletic director and coach at WSU, and nobody who paid attention this season could blame them.

This four-part series has demonstrated that the Pac-12 badly needs to repair its football brand. The conference has a former Harvard tennis player (Scott) and a Harvard-educated lawyer (Dixon) in charge of football. Dixon was once the salary-cap manager for the Kansas City Chiefs but has no training in officiating or prior experience running football operations.

"It's absurd that nobody in charge of football knows much about football," one Pac-12 coach said.

The Pac-12 isn't respected. How else can you explain the selection committee ranking the 10-win Cougars so low? The series also revealed top-down pressure on the conference officials, including habitual, grinding input from Dixon, outlined in detail.

Chun and Leach spoke out. With the stakes so high, they weren't leaving the lobbying to chance. Does the Pac-12 protect certain programs more than others? The conference says it doesn't. And it would seem reasonable that the Pac-12 would want all its members to succeed and flourish.

But one former Pac-12 Conference executive said, "I think they're very concerned about football results. The perception is that it looks like they didn't want WSU to finish in the money."

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Mark Shuken is the head of the Pac-12 Networks. He has a sterling reputation and is known as a top-notch talent in his industry. His annual compensation package is unknown. His potential bonuses, also unknown. His travel expenses, unknown. But what's clear is that he works out of an office in San Francisco and also maintains a residence with his family in Southern California.

A question: Who pays for Shuken's travel to and from Los Angeles to the Bay Area? The Pac-12? Or Shuken?

When asked for Shuken's compensation package and travel expenses, Walker, head of communications for the Pac-12 Conference said: "Mark Shuken's compensation is reported and included in our Form 990s."

The Pac-12 Conference, required as a 501(c)3 to file annually, has not finalized its Form 990 for 2017-18. Shuken was hired after the fiscal year that ended in the summer of 2016. There's no data available.

Walker said upon a second request on the matter: "Our Form 990 will be made available to the public on the normal course of business timeframe, which is consistent with our peer conferences."

This really is the business of the Pac-12 CEO Group, isn't it?

Said Hill, the former Utah AD: "They're the only ones who can take a hard-core look at things and they're so busy and have so much on their plate, it's difficult for that group. The CEO Group is not going to look at nickels and dimes. What's $85 million to them in a $3 billion budget?

"But the AD group could do that."

To the AD group, saving every nickel and dime matters. It's the difference between hiring a better pool of assistants, funding strength and conditioning programs and making sure recruits have the amenities they like.

The Pac-12 Conference headquarters in downtown San Francisco cost the conference $6.9 million in rent a year. The conference commissioner makes double what his peers make and travels using a chartered jet. When some ADs hear about these things, they wonder if that money could be put to use trying to help the conference football programs keep pace with the SEC and Big Ten.

Rick Neuheisel, former football coach in the conference, said the competitive disadvantage is noticeable when he watched last year's bowl games. He doesn't think Scott is dumb. In fact, Neuheisel calls Scott "brilliant" but also points out that changes in the commissioner's management style are needed to go along with improved financial distributions and better television exposure.

"The late time slots the Pac-12 is playing in, if you live on the East Coast you have to commit to watching a game," Neuheisel said. "You have to put on a pot of coffee and want to hunker down. Who knows how much that costs a guy like Christian McCaffrey and Gardner Minshew?

"That might cost them a Heisman."

Washington and Utah will suit up for the Pac-12 Championship game today at Levi's Stadium. They're seemingly the best the conference has, but the demand for tickets should serve as evidence of a larger issue.

A pair of tickets for the Washington-Utah title game: $28.

Two tickets to the SEC title game: $540.

Is Scott willing to do a deep examination and make changes? Is he willing to extend the notion of transparency beyond the CEO Group to his ADs and the public? Can the leader of the Pac-12 effectively reconnect himself to the core mission of the conference - promoting its members? Or is a six-year downward slide of the Pac-12 inevitable due to simple finances?

Those are questions only Scott and his bosses can answer now.