Arizona State president admits Pac-12 football schedule needs improvement

Steve Berkowitz | USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS — Arizona State President Michael Crow said Monday the Pac-12 Conference needs to improve its scheduling of football games so that they are less disruptive to the teams and the schools.

Crow made his remarks to USA TODAY Sports while attending the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, an organization that includes the large public research schools in every state.

The comments come in the wake of recent complaints from several Pac-12 coaches about the number of night games their teams have played this season.

The Pac-12 is early in $3 billion TV agreements with ESPN and Fox that dramatically increased schools’ athletics revenues and resulted in more games being played in prime time.

“We have the students’ interests at heart and at the same time we have to be able to generate revenue for the teams and for the schools because the football revenue pays for so many other sports,” Crow said. “But we’re looking at (scheduling). We’re looking at what’s the right mix of games, when should games be played — and that’s a thing under constant discussion and review.

“I think what we’re looking for is making certain that the more disruptive games are odd occurrences that don’t affect the same school over and over, so it’s an odd occurrence, as opposed to a regular occurrence.

“We need to do a better job of scheduling and spreading that stuff out. We obviously have to work with the (television) carriers, but at the end of the day, we’ll determine what the schedule is. We have to do that. The conference must determine the schedule to the interests of the schools.”

In October, UCLA coach Jim Mora, Arizona’s Rich Rodriguez and Stanford’s David Shaw spoke out about scheduling issues.

Mora, at a news conference, called his team’s consecutive Thursday night games at Stanford and then at home against California “a complete injustice to our young men.”

Rodriguez spoke out after learning that the Wildcats’ upcoming game at Washington would be starting at 8 p.m. Pacific Time.

“I just don’t understand how this happens,” Rodriguez was quoted as saying. “At some point the conference has to have the ability to step in and say, ‘Hey, give this team one afternoon road game.’ ”

Pac--12 Commissioner Larry Scott earlier addressed Rodriguez's concerns in an interview with CBS Sports: "I'm sympathetic to his concerns, but in some instances, there are things we can do about it and in this case there's really nothing we can do. Our athletic directors and presidents and conference office agreed to give a certain amount of flexibility to broadcast partners to pick games and have nighttime broadcast windows. In exchange, we have blockbuster TV deals that have been incredibly beneficial to our schools and student-athletes from a resource and exposure perspective, and the trade-off is worth it."

Pac-12 spokesman Erik Hardenbergh would not comment beyond Scott told CBS.

Talking to the San Jose Mercury News, Shaw made similar, albeit less strident, comments: "Sunday is the players' day off, and it's tough sometimes, getting back to their dorms at 3 or 4 in the morning from a road trip."

On Monday, Crow said: “At the end of the season, everybody will talk about it — how did this go, what about this, what about that. We tend to look at it at the end of the season, sort of evaluate it all together.”