BURBANK, Calif. -- Even after another successful year, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said at Pac-12 Media Days Thursday that the best is yet to come for the conference.
"The Pac-12 Conference has come a long way in the last 100 years and what makes me especially proud as commissioner, that from our founding at the Imperial Hotel in Portland, we've held true to that deep conviction that academic and athletic excellence can go hand-in-hand. It's easy for me to stand up here and talk about excellence, but it's much harder to deliver it."
Scott acknowledged it will take time, but said the conference is starting to truly get the respect it deserves given all the accolades it and its student-athletes have won throughout the years.
He said some of that respect will come in exposure from the television deals, which will allow fans throughout the country to watch Pac-12 football.
Scott announced that Washington and Texas will play a regular-season basketball game in Shanghai, China, on November 14, 2015.
"It provides a way in which our member institutions can deepen their academic ties to new regions of the world, and it promises to be a seminal educational, academic and cultural exchange for our athletes," he said.
The Pac-12 is also continuing to do its part in ensuring safety for its student athletes, adding injury spotters to identify head trauma in football. Also, the conference is spending $3.5 million to conduct research on head trauma, mental illness and other health and safety issues.
One of the conference's seemingly largest gripes each year is its officiating, and Scott said he believes the fast-paced style of play from teams in the Pac-12 leads to more penalties.
However, the conference is taking steps to improve the officiating, starting with hiring David Coleman, the former NFL head of officiating.
"We do tend to run more plays than other conferences," he said. "As we've looked at it, that is one of the criteria that we've identified that's probably always going to lend itself to more penalties. There's a direct correlation between the number of offensive plays you run and the number of penalties."
Scott said the Pac-12 has no intentions of expanding in the near future. He mentioned that being a 12-team conference means a team plays every one of its division opponents, as well as four of six teams from the other division. He said that strength of schedule is unprecedented.
"Simply put, no one will have a tougher road to the playoffs than the Pac-12 Champion," he said.
Reach the reporter at Justin.Toscano@asu.edu or on Twitter @justintoscano3
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