Pac-4 move to hire Oliver Luck raises obvious questions about paths not taken
Sometimes, an entity or group can make the right decision at the wrong time. That might apply to one recent piece of news in the college sports world. The news that Oliver Luck, Andrew Luck’s dad and the former athletic director at West Virginia, has been hired as a consultant by the Pac-4 schools seems like a case of too little, too late.
Luck is definitely an informed and educated insider in college sports and the media realm. He was an athletic director, but he also worked for the NCAA for a few years. He has been an executive with NFL Europe and the XFL. He has experience with — and exposure to — media negotiations and all sorts of insider conversations in the sports world, both pro and college. Given the Pac-12’s demise and the spectacular failure of its media rights pursuits, Luck might have been a far better choice for commissioner than George Kliavkoff in 2021. It’s second-guessing if you didn’t originally want Luck as the man in charge, but if you did want Luck, you’re standing on very solid ground right now.
The other way Oliver Luck could have been deployed by the Pac-12: He could have been brought in as a consultant not in August of 2023, but in July of 2022, right after USC and UCLA left for the Big Ten. Luck could have given savvy advice with an insider’s touch, something Kliavkoff simply was never in a position to do.
Questions are abundant, answers are few. Now we’ll see what the Pac-4 will do.
