Former Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne told a Tucson radio station Friday he was concerned about the Pac-12's lack of collaborative leadership and the conference's revenue distribution model.

Byrne has been Alabama's athletic director since 2017. He was AD at Arizona from 2010-17.

Byrne said while he was at Arizona, he other Pac-12 athletic directors tried unsuccessfully to share their concerns with the conference office.

"There were a couple of us about five or six years ago that were concerned with the financial model we were creating within the Pac-12," Byrne told radio station KCUB-AM. "We constructively tried to ask some questions. ...

"Us, the ADs, we're on the ground every day dealing with our 500-plus student athletes, our 20 sports or whatever you have at an institution, the fans. It's one of the things I love about doing what I do. I get to talk to a lot of different types of fans. The folks who are sitting in the 50-yard line skyboxes and the folks who are scraping every dime together to come to a game. We need to be cognizant of those folks, of the student body, our faculty -- all those things.

"And when we would raise questions, it was challenging because there wasn't a lot of concern with what we had to say. That was frustrating. I feel very fortunate in the Southeastern Conference. Our commissioner, Greg Sankey, is awesome. He is very collaborative in what we do."

Byrne's comments echo issues detailed in a four-part series on the Pac-12 and the leadership of commissioner Larry Scott by The Oregonian's John Canzano. The series ran last week.

You can read Canzano's series here.

Byrne said he believed part of a conference's responsibility is "maximizing resources and getting them to the campuses so they can be competitive nationally."

Byrne praised Scott's ability to raise revenue for the conference. But he said he and other Pac-12 athletic directors were concerned about the conference's expenses and the amount of that revenue that was reaching the schools.

Byrne is the son of former Oregon athletic director Bill Byrne. The younger Byrne worked as athletic department administrator at both Oregon and Oregon State earlier in his career.

-- Ken Goe

kgoe@oregonian.com | @KenGoe

An earlier version of this story misidentified the call letters for radio station KCUB-AM.