Pac-12, George Kliavkoff agree to part ways months after collapse of conference

After a tumultuous year, the Pac-12 Conference will have a new leader. 

The Pac-12 Board of Directors on Friday announced that they and commissioner George Kliavkoff had mutually agreed to part ways, effective Feb. 29. 

“More details about new leadership of the Pac-12 will be announced next week,” the conference said in a press release. 

FORMER PAC-12 STAR DEFENDS DISMANTLING OF CONFERENCE, REALIGNMENT: ‘IT’S TIME’

The move is not surprising, considering what has happened to the conference over the past several months. 

In August, Colorado decided to move to the Big 12, which triggered an avalanche of change in the “Conference of Champions.” 

Oregon and Washington elected to join USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah heading to the Big 12. 

On Sept. 1, Stanford and Cal decided the ACC would be a better conference for their futures, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the lone schools still committed to the Pac-12. 

The collapse of the most influential and powerful conference on the West Coast was a seismic change in college athletics. 

“It’s really, really sad to see,” legendary college football coach Dennis Erickson told the Palm Beach Post in August. “The thing that upsets me the most, besides the conference falling apart, the reasons for it. You got all these presidents that talk about academics and talk about loyalty and the bottom line is they move because of one thing … money.

“It had nothing to do with education. It had nothing to do with players. It had nothing to do with the school. It had to do with money.”

The Pac-12 will operate as a two-team conference starting this year for the next two seasons, with the Oregon State and Washington State football programs announcing a six-game schedule agreement with the Mountain West in December. 

Kliavkoff is a former MGM executive and was named Pac-12 commissioner in the spring of 2021.