The Novo theater in Los Angeles has some very cool acts on the schedule. Brian McKnight and Lupe Fiasco will play the venue in coming months. But the headliner on Friday at Pac-12 Conference Media Day will be George Kliavkoff.

I’m dying to see his performance.

Said one conference insider: “It’s George’s stage.”

I just wish the conference commissioner was sharing with his bosses. The Pac-12 CEO Group is compromised of a dozen presidents and chancellors of the respective universities. They hold the votes and make the decisions, but what they don’t often do is step up and speak out. I’d like to hear from them more often on matters relating to the conference.

Kliavkoff’s speech will be the most anticipated and attended in the history of the conference’s annual football hype-fest. If he wants to win it, he’ll need to do more than cast a strong presence. He’ll need to get candid and share his vision.

Last month, the Pac-12 got ditched by UCLA and USC, tentpoles of the very market that Friday’s event is held in. The conference is now in crisis-management mode, seeking a path forward while engaged in a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN and Fox.

Blame Kliavkoff for the splintering of the Pac-12?

I guess. He was the commissioner of record when the Big Ten poached two key properties. But as one current athletic director told me, “What is George supposed to do when USC lies to his face?”

The troubles for the Pac-12 were born well beyond Kliavkoff’s first 365 days on the job. The presidents and chancellors who enabled and tolerated the act of ex-commissioner Larry Scott hold a large share of the blame. He overspent, failed to adequately position the Pac-12, and got lapped by the SEC and Big Ten in the race for media-rights dollars.

Scott put the Pac-12 on a perilous path, while sipping a glass of Dom Pérignon on a chartered flight. But the presidents and chancellors who hired Scott and left him unsupervised for a decade are equally culpable. Many of them are long gone, though. Only UCLA’s Gene Block and Arizona State’s Michael Crow are still around. I’d love to hear an explanation from that duo on Friday.

Being a commissioner isn’t easy business. But as Don Draper once famously ranted, “That’s what the money’s for!” Kliavkoff will be paid well to stand out front on Friday and absorb the hit that his predecessor and those university presidents lined up for him.

Kliavkoff likes a good scrap. One of his staff members who observed him jousting with a reporter in March at the Pac-12 basketball tournaments told me that the commissioner likes to mix it up. He’ll get his shot on Friday. The Pac-12 has been knocked down and dragged around the ring in the last few weeks. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren broke the so-called “alliance” with a secret haymaker blow. Kliavkoff’s job now is to get himself up off the canvas and punch back.

Why the Pac-12 didn’t deviate from this path years ago is puzzling. Navigate — a data and consulting firm that contracts with major college conferences — published a report in March that laid it all out.

It projected the Pac-12’s total media rights payouts to members would eclipse the Big 12’s by 2026.

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Great news for the Pac-12, but the chart also noted the surging revenue of the SEC and Big Ten. It was a giant, waving, red flag. One that had been waving in the Pac-12’s face for several years.

This is the trajectory Kliavkoff inherited. If you’re spinning the circumstances positively, it’s evident that the new commissioner has an opportunity to come up with new, innovative ideas that close the gap. If you’re spinning negative, you have to wonder, is it too late?

I suspect this will be the last Pac-12 Media Day held in Los Angeles. I think Las Vegas is a good bet to host the event in future. Kliavkoff still lives there and is well connected. He referred to it as “the sports capital of the world,” last March.

The Novo is a fine venue. It will have two stages, one for Pac-12 players and the other for coaches. They’ll speak all day. But Kliavkoff will make the opening remarks. He’ll be alone up there. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

The Pac-12 Conference’s top universities get better television ratings than Big 12 counterparts. The Pac-12 has bigger TV markets, superior brands, stronger broad-based athletic programs, better academics, and higher-profile members.

The Pac-12 also includes the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones that media partners covet. The notion that the Big 12 is somehow stronger than the Pac-12 is delusional from any quantitative standpoint.

Still, some in Big 12 country insist it’s true.

Stewart Mandel of The Athletic published an interesting study that compared the television impact of the Big 12 vs. Pac-12. He looked at TV ratings from 2015-2019 and 2021 for the remaining universities in each conference.

The Pac-12 won by knockout.

The top six remaining Pac-12 universities out-ranked all the remaining Big 12 universities by average rating. Oregon, Stanford, Washington, Washington State, Colorado and Utah all averaged more than 1.44 million viewers per game. Oklahoma State was the Big 12’s top-rated product, weighing in at 1.28 million viewers.

The ability to kick off games at 10:30 p.m. ET — “Pac-12 After Dark” — creates a distinct ratings advantage for the conference. Wrote Mandel: “As much as Pac-12 coaches and fans loathe those late games, they may be the league’s saving grace in its next deal.”

I’ve looked hard at the Big 12 in recent weeks, trying to figure out whether a merger with the Pac-12 made sense (Answer: nope). I also examined the Big 12’s TV markets and wondered if there was a no-brainer target for the Pac-12 to poach (Answer: nope).

I also don’t think the Big 12 is a strong candidate to lure away any of the remaining Pac-12 universities. When I asked Pac-12 athletic directors about the possibility of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and ASU leaving, I was told another round of defections was unlikely as long as Oregon and Washington remained in the Pac-12.

One current AD said: “I don’t know where all this ‘the Big 12 is better’ stuff is coming from. You wouldn’t trade our troubles for theirs.”

The Big 12 lost Texas and Oklahoma. Like the Pac-12, it’s watching the Big Ten and SEC position themselves as mega-conferences in front of what will be an expanded College Football Playoff. The holdover TV markets in the Big 12 have a combined 10.25 million television households. The Pac-12, even without the Los Angeles TV market, has 12.4 million.

The Big 12 will add another 5 million TV homes with the additions of BYU, Houston, Cincinnati and UCF, but that doesn’t solve the time-zone conundrum. The Big 12’s top games will always be stuck in head-to-head battles with the best inventory of the new-and-improved Big Ten and SEC. The Pac-12’s late kickoffs may stink for fans and media, but ESPN needs them and will pay for them.

I suspect that we’re going to soon learn that the “talks” with the Big 12 about a possible merger were never really that serious. Also, that the Big 12 spun out of the rejection in damage-control mode, eager to craft an alternate narrative.

I’m not sure what a merger with the Big 12 even offered, aside from strength in numbers. Or maybe the state of Texas. But the more I thought about it, teaming up with the Big 12 made little sense for the Pac-12.

If you’re the Pac-12 and looking for an advantageous partnership, you’d first turn to the ACC (28 million-plus TV households). If you are the Pac-12 and looking to poach programs, you’d probably turn to San Diego State (1.1 million TV households in the Pacific Time Zone). And the world views of the typical university presidents and chancellors in the Pac-12 footprint don’t mesh easily with those of the Big 12’s leaders.

We’re going to hear from Pac-12 leaders this week as part of the conference’s football media day. Commissioner George Kliavkoff needs to answer some tough questions and may even have some news to share. But before that, the delusion about Big 12 superiority has to stop.

Big 12 fans are nervous about being left behind. Some of the same hysteria swept over the Pac-12 in the wake of the USC/UCLA news. But it’s been replaced by logic, reason and a search for good options. The Pac-12 is the better conference. Period. End stop. The only question now is what ESPN and others are willing to pay to carry its games.