Inside one of college football’s cathedrals last September, Oregon swarmed the Ohio Stadium field in a joyous postgame celebration after stunning the Buckeyes in a rousing early-season upset.
It was a signature win for then coach Mario Cristobal, a rare victory by the West in the East and a crowning moment for new Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff. High above the field that day within the Ohio State press box, Kliavkoff and Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren strode side by side through the hallways—seemingly fast friends, business partners and likeminded men whose collective interest was calming the college sports landscape after the SEC’s big splash.
In fact, in one of his first moves as the league’s leader, Kliavkoff had struck what seemed like a landmark deal on the heels of Texas’s and Oklahoma’s moves from the Big 12 to the SEC. He convinced the Big Ten and ACC to form an alliance where they collectively agreed not to poach each other’s members, a pact that featured no binding contract but was termed a “gentleman’s agreement.”
