The Pac-12 Conference had some news to announce on Monday.

Just not the news we all needed.

In a teleconference starring commissioner Larry Scott and University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano, the conference announced that it was implementing scheduling mandates for its college basketball programs.

Uh, huh.

Also, that it continues to seek private-equity partners.

Yeah.

Also, it announced a change to the intra-conference transfer policy.

OK.

But it turns out that the real news was buried in Form 990, a required tax filing by the non-profit.

The conference reported a slight decline in revenues for the fiscal year. It’s distributions were relatively flat compared to the prior fiscal year. It was a lot of the same, no surprises there. Except there was one notable increase -- Scott got a raise.

His salary: $5,300,000.

That’s a $500,000 raise over the last reported fiscal year.

Far be from me to begrudge a Harvard-educated lawyer from earning what the market will pay him. I’m as American as the next guy. Go get it, boss man. But the market in this case is out of its mind. Because I’m not convinced Scott’s position is even necessary anymore.

Consider that the conference pays Mark Shuken handsomely as Pac-12 Network president. And by all accounts, Jamie Zaninovich, a deputy commissioner and Chief Operating Officer at the conference’s downtown San Francisco offices, is the man running the actual conference on a day to day basis.

It’s also become evident in recent months that the commissioner’s bosses -- “The Pac-12 CEO Group" -- no longer want him out front alone in front of the public or media. Not even on a relatively innocent conference call. DiStefano was by his side again, just as he was during a news conference at the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament in Las Vegas in March.

My hunch is that the CEO Group didn’t like Scott speaking for the group as if he were the czar. Bad optics. They wanted to present a unified front and give a more collaborative appearance. But it sort of feels like they’re throwing away $5.3 million in salary on an empty suit.

The Form 990 also clarified that Scott is allowed to travel first class “when warranted, at his discretion.”

As Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos once told me: “Larry is a first-cabin guy.”

The Southeastern Conference’s Greg Sankey, who flew coach during the NCAA Tournament, must be kicking his feet at the ceiling.

Scott again made more money in the fiscal year than Sankey. It’s a distinction justified at Pac-12 headquarters by pointing out Scott works two jobs. One for the conference, the other for the network. But both positions feel redundant given the executive teams in place and the increased visibility of the CEO Group’s chair.

DiStefano isn’t an old guard holdover. He’s a new guy, like the core of the CEO Group. And I wonder as the presidents and chancellors of the universities examine the Form 990 if they’ll ask themselves some tough questions.

For one: “What does Larry do?”

The network is failing.

The conference remains on shaky ground.

The Pac-12 is looking for a private-equity bailout. Among the inventory in the debate warehouse: Flat revenue. Higher expenses. Smaller footprint. Less success in the revenue-generating sports.

The guy in charge of it all got a raise.

I’m not anti-raise, mind you. I’d be in favor of a bump to $10 million annually if Scott could fix the conference’s problems, boost revenue, get the network larger distribution and help the programs win more games. You know, merit based stuff. Maybe put the commish on commission.

Scott spent some time in the teleconference promoting what he called “increased clarity and transparency” in the tax filing. It breaks out the Pac-12 Conference expenses vs. the Pac-12 Network expenses for the first time. But all that does for me is underscore how easily the conference slides expenses around.

Conference sources have long said that employees who work for one of the entities (the network) were routinely asked to report to supervisors who worked for the other side (the conference). In an accompanying news release today, for the first time it admitted that there are “shared” expenses.

As simple as moving peas from one side of the plate to the other.

A reporter asked about the financials and the distributions to conference members during the call. The yearly Pac-12′s distributions to its members is projected to lag behind the Big Ten by as much as $20 million per university in the next fiscal year.

“We compare very favorably in terms of percentage of revenues distributed," Scott said.

He chose the word “percentage."

It was clever. Maybe that’s why he makes the big dollars.