It was always about the presentation for Larry Scott.
The rebranding of the Pac-12 Conference (they’re not university presidents, but C.E.O.s). The media days held at a Hollywood movie studio lot. Moving the headquarters from a sleepy Bay Area suburb to a downtown San Francisco office that cost $6.9 million in rent in 2019 (and nearly twice that in deferred rent), according to The Oregonian. And for good measure, the comped $7,500-per-night Las Vegas hotel suite during the Pac-12 basketball tournament with the marble hot tub, private elevator and 24-hour butler service.
There was a time — far closer to when Scott was hired to lead the conference in 2009 and the money was rolling in — when such opulence might have been justified as the cost of doing business.