No word yet if Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott will stay in the penthouse suite at The Sentinel Hotel but he’s booked for a speaking engagement at the downtown Portland hotel on Thursday morning.

The event put on by the Portland Business Journal is billed as: “Power Breakfast.”

Tickets are still available and cost $50.

I’m thinking Scott would have much preferred to have a Pac-12 football victory to crow about this week. Instead, he’ll walk into the room 0-1 after an Arizona defense that returned eight starters gave up 45 points and 600 yards to Hawaii in the Pac-12′s latest embarrassing non-conference loss.

Looks like Scott may have to lead with the Pac-12′s swimming and diving dominance. No conference in America does pool play better. Unfortunately, those sports aren’t revenue generators. If they were, the SEC would be all over them.

This brings us to Oregon football, really, doesn’t it?

The Ducks play Auburn on Saturday in Arlington, Tex. in a game that Scott and the rest of the conference absolutely have to have. There are other important Pac-12 games (Stanford vs. Northwestern, Utah vs. BYU, USC vs. Fresno State, UCLA at Cincinnati), but if the conference wants to be taken seriously, the argument for legitimacy starts with No. 11 Oregon.

Win that game, and you have something to talk about.

Lose it, and the sad-sack narrative continues.

It’s been a dismal run lately for Scott, and that centers with an alarming trend in football, the most lucrative college sport in the land. Scott’s conference spends more money than its peers and has left its members at a staggering financial disadvantage. That plays out on the field during college football.

The Pac-12 has been a non-factor in the College Football Playoff, missing the postseason tournament last season for the second-straight year. In fact, since the inception of the CFP five years ago, there have been 20 entries that have participated -- only two have hailed from Scott’s so-called “Conference of Champions.”

The Pac-12 needs Oregon to beat Auburn on Saturday. It needs the country to see quarterback Justin Herbert pick apart the Tigers’ defense. It needs to see the Ducks’ defense control the line of scrimmage. It needs, in the end, for Oregon to make a solid statement about legitimacy on behalf of itself, and the 11 other Pac-12 institutions and the embattled commissioner.

Oregon is a conference outlier.

UO gets unusually strong financial support from mega-boosters such as Phil and Penny Knight. It has a robust season-ticket holder base. Also, Oregon has former AD Pat Kilkenny. He is not only a valuable philanthropic resource for Oregon -- helping buy out a contract or two over the years -- one of the Kilkenny family private aircraft has been available to the head football coach to help with recruiting.

It was Kilkenny’s aircraft, remember, that Willie Taggart utilized to travel to his job interview with Florida State. Also, Kilkenny’s plane which zips around the country with current coach Mario Cristobal aboard. The point is, while Oregon suffers from the lack of conference support like everyone else, it happens to be less reliant than its conference peers on that support.

This is Oregon’s time, really.

But the Ducks don’t just want to dominate the Pac-12. They’d like to be in the national conversation, playing in the national playoff, steamrolling other Power Five members. And the first big step toward that comes against Auburn, who will start a true freshman at quarterback.

Scott must be thinking, “This is a big one for me.”

I suspect he’ll be in attendance at the game in Texas. Because if Oregon wins in front of a national television audience, it amounts to bowl-game like exposure for the Pac-12. It makes a statement. And it’s a victory that Scott can utilize not only to help with his media-rights bailout plan, but also, just to hold up to the public and try to change what’s been a troubling narrative for him.

Thursday’s event speaker is promoted by the breakfast organizers as, “a bold, innovative leader with a vision for transformative change - from expansion and revitalization of the Pac-12 to equal prize money at Wimbledon and much more.”

The Pac-12 officiating has been a scandalous mess. The finances, including Scott’s bloated $5.3 million annual salary, are alarming. The results in the sports that really matter have been a disaster, too.

The commissioner really does need something new, and uplifting, to talk about.

Scott probably needs Oregon over Auburn more than the Ducks even need it.