SAN FRANCISCO -- Woodie Dixon wore a pair of slacks, a zip-up sweater jacket, and a pair of blue Adidas low-top sneakers to the office a couple of Saturdays ago. He had a sandwich for lunch. And he watched Pac-12 Conference football.
Lots of it. All day long.
Dixon, the league's general counsel and head of football, sat beside David Coleman, the Pac-12 head of officiating, in the downtown San Francisco headquarters.
The men were bellied-up to a high-top counter in front of eight television screens and 16 computer monitors. The words "VIDEO ADMINISTRATION ROOM" were printed outside on the glass doors. In the adjacent room, the replay officials in the Centralized Instant-Replay Command Center were busy debating and discussing football plays with 26 television monitors and computer screens flickering around them.
It was like Buffalo Wild Wings -- without the wings.
LEFT OUT
From officiating issues to high operating costs to being left out of the College Football Playoff for the second straight year, the Pac-12 Conference is facing a multitude of problems.
This is part two
in a four-part series that takes a deeper look at what is ailing the conference.
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UCLA and Arizona State were playing a football game and Bruins coach Chip Kelly called timeout a few seconds before halftime. It got Dixon's attention. Kelly was gesturing across the field at Sun Devils' coach Herm Edwards and pointing at the press box. Edwards looked confused.
Then, play resumed, UCLA took a knee to end the half and Kelly was intercepted by the television sideline reporter for a quick interview. Dixon, who had been sitting in silence, was now on his feet and pointing at one of the television screens.
"Turn that one up," he ordered a technician.
The sound came on. Kelly explained to the audience that he called timeout because he wanted to give his assistants in the coaching box upstairs a head start on getting to the locker room before the intermission.
Dixon, 45, is the central figure in the instant-replay officiating scandal that rocked the conference earlier this season. During the Sept. 21 Washington State vs. USC game, he was watching the game from home when an instant-replay review was initiated. In question, was a potential targeting call.
Dixon has no officiating experience.
He has no specialized instant-replay training.
He isn't supposed to be anywhere near the process. And yet, somehow, Dixon intervened and overruled both the in-stadium replay official and the team working at the conference's centralized command center.
"There was a mistake that was made here; there's no question about that," Dixon's boss, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, said.
But what was the mistake exactly? And why did the conference conceal the punishment of the guilty parties? Also, how did flawed Pac-12 Conference office culture play into an officiating scandal that has eroded the trust of coaches, administrators and the public?
Dixon's phone call, it turns out, is just part of the problem.
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Bill Richardson was a longtime football and basketball referee. Now, he's the supervisor of instant-replay officials for the Pac-12.
He spends a good portion of his work shift on his feet, moving around the centralized command center while wearing a headset and peering at as many as eight different camera angles of a given play. He's in communication with the instant-replay booth in various conference stadiums, too. Also, he has a direct line to the referees on the field. There is a lot of audio traffic on his headset.
To avoid confusion, Richardson decided this season that any instruction coming from the command center would be prefaced with, "San Francisco..."
As in, "San Francisco confirms the call on the field." Or, "San Francisco rules that it's a fumble, recovered by UCLA."
"Our job is to get it right," Richardson said.
He's a well-decorated official. He's worked in an NFL instant-replay booth. As an on-field official, he worked the 1999 BCS National Championship game between Tennessee and Florida State.
Beside him on this Saturday in the replay booth is Mike Batlan. He lives in Salem and commutes to San Francisco for his work shift. Batlan, who spent 16 seasons as a referee in the conference, has been an instant-replay official since 2017. He has a pristine reputation, works well with Richardson, and was assigned the UCLA-ASU game.
Batlan said: "Our job is to be effective, accurate and efficient."
Also in the dimly lit room, wearing a dress shirt and tie is Mike Ortiz. He spent nearly five years working for football coach Mike Riley at Oregon State as the video coordinator beginning in 2007. Ortiz also had stints at Colorado and Washington. His title now: director of video operations for the Pac-12 Conference.
It's a qualified group of experts, using the most-impressive technology available. In fact, the command center is tapped into the dedicated high-speed data lines that serve the conference universities. Those lines, buried beneath the flooring, transmit 10 gigabytes of data per second.
Ortiz's video team not only gets the feed faster than anyone else, but it then uses state-of-the-art equipment to slow the action to the millisecond, frame-by-frame, sometimes in angles not available to the television broadcast.
The system appears largely foolproof.
Except, it wasn't on Sept. 21. Because Richardson's team in the command center got submarined when Dixon picked up the telephone and interfered on the final play of the third quarter of Washington State's game against USC.
Trojans quarterback JT Daniels dropped to a knee on the play. WSU linebacker Logan Tago dove and initiated helmet-to-helmet contact. In-stadium replay officials ruled targeting, which would have ejected Tago. Officials in San Francisco's command center agreed. But Dixon, at home watching the game, overruled them both.
Later in the game, on Washington State's final drive, quarterback Gardner Minshew took a helmet-to-helmet shot from a USC defender. It resulted in a non-call, eliciting a curious comment from Cougars' coach Mike Leach two days after the game.
Said Leach: "I'm not allowed to comment on it - but I'll tell you the guy that can I think you gotta call is Woodie Dixon at the Pac-12 offices. I'd love to comment on it if I was allowed to, but I'm not allowed to."
WSU lost to USC, 39-36. If targeting or unnecessary roughness had been called on the Minshew hit, it would have given the Cougars a first down and a chance to tie or win the game. That outcome is still a sore subject in Pullman. That unfortunate loss to the Trojans did damage. Even before Washington beat the Cougars in the snow last weekend in the Palouse, WSU was a long shot to crack the College Football Playoff.
Now, the 10-2 Cougars aren't even in the Pac-12 Championship Game. Instead, Washington and Utah play on Friday for a trip to the Rose Bowl. And staff at Pac-12 headquarters have been given talking points on how to respond to media questions about Dixon's interference.
"That's all behind us now," Ortiz said.
But it's not really.
Reporters continue to ask the Pac-12 Conference about the lack of transparency. Some fans lost faith and wonder how many other games were affected by similar meddling. And while conference coaches are deterred from speaking publicly by fines, some of them have privately wondered if the conference is trying to steer the outcome of games to protect its most valued programs.
In text messages, WSU coach Leach - who has a law degree from Pepperdine - ripped Dixon, Coleman and Scott. He accused Scott of being a hypocrite when it comes to player safety, he blistered Coleman, and he attacked Dixon's credibility in the texts, which emerged in a public-records request by Yahoo Sports after Leach's post-game remarks.
"Why can't I help wondering, if you're trying to manipulate wins and losses?" Leach texted Dixon.
Dixon shot back: "Mike don't ever again accuse [me] of manipulating wins and losses. Please show this text to your AD and have him give me a call."
It was a revealing exchange.
In it, Dixon reminded Leach that there's a conference pecking order. Scott, the commissioner, isn't known as a collaborative decisionmaker. Coaches and athletic directors say he doesn't regularly consult with them. Not even on matters of football policy. Scott works more closely with his own bosses -- the university presidents and chancellors.
"Larry is more apt to call and tell you what is going to happen, rather than ask for your input," said ex-Oregon and ex-Washington State AD Bill Moos, now at Nebraska.
Rick Neuheisel, who once coached at UCLA, Washington and Colorado, said under Scott's direction, "there's an aristocratic feeling, for sure, at the conference headquarters."
Dixon is a Harvard-educated lawyer. He previously worked for the Kansas City Chiefs as a salary-cap manager. But nothing in his background or his job duties suggests Dixon should be involved with an in-game football decision.
"That's the one guy that should realize he shouldn't be there," Neuheisel said. "The replay process should only be guys that know every rule known to man. Woodie knows that. He should not have been anywhere near that process."
The conference announced on Oct. 24 that it had disciplined "certain Pac-12 personnel responsible for the inadequate procedures and involved in the inappropriate influencing of the replay official's decision in the USC vs. Washington State game." The release was issued at 4:10 p.m.
It didn't reveal which Pac-12 employees were disciplined or what the penalties were. However, at 8:31 p.m. the same day, the Pac-12 issued a second news release announcing that Arizona State defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales had been fined $5,000 for criticizing the officiating after ASU's loss to Stanford the previous week.
"The Pac-12 has specific rules that prohibit our coaches from making public comments about officiating, and this prohibition includes comments that create doubts about the credibility of the conference's officiating program," Scott said in the release.
It was a move that underscores the culture of the Pac-12 headquarters. Leaders declined to publicly reprimand and punish high-ranking personnel for actions that created doubts about credibility, yet it publicly fined and punished an assistant coach who they said did essentially the same thing.
Andrew Walker, head of communications for the Pac-12, said: "In agreement with our members it was decided that we would not make public the discipline on employees that we announced in our prior press release on this matter. Coaches discipline - including what is/is not made public - is specified in our rulebook, which is agreed to by our members."
The Oregonian/OregonLive has since learned that the "certain Pac-12 personnel" disciplined were Woodie Dixon and head of officiating David Coleman.
When Gonzales was asked if the double standard for punishment bothered him, he chuckled, and offered: "No comment."
No kidding.
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Tony Corrente quit in the middle of the 2014 football season. He was the Pac-12 Conference coordinator of officiating. The abrupt resignation caused a stir across the conference.
Scott called Corrente's departure "unfortunate," in a news release on Oct. 9 of that year. That same release indicated that the resignation was due to both "personal and professional" reasons. Corrente, still an NFL official and now in his 24th season, has never revealed why he left.
Multiple sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Corrente's sudden resignation was fueled by weeks of frustration with Pac-12 leadership. He'd grown weary with the conference's failure to publicly support his team of officials. Also, he was tired of hearing from griping coaches. Conference coaches who spoke regularly with Corrente said in the days before his resignation he sounded increasingly discouraged and even told one, "I may not be here much longer."
An executive-level conference source said Corrente was faced with working closely with Dixon, who regularly offered guidance and criticism of the league's officials.
"It's an issue," the source said. "It's constant criticism without reason. Tony had constant interference with his job."
The weekend before Corrente quit, Arizona beat then-No. 2 Oregon. USC also lost an early-season game. Stanford did, too. Coaches were grumbling. Leadership was tense. Some controversial officiating decisions were at issue. The contenders in the conference had suffered unfortunate early-season losses. At stake was a College Football Playoff berth worth a $6 million distribution to the conference.
Basically, the Pac-12 couldn't get out of its own way.
But Corrente did.
"He was tired of all the pressure," one head coach said.
Corrente, reached via telephone last week, said, "I appreciate you reaching out to me but my contract with the NFL prohibits me from having any contact with the media. Thank you for understanding."
His midseason resignation remains a troubling indicator. It draws attention to the importance some conference leaders had placed on stability, professionalism, integrity and trust. Corrente is known as a stand-up guy. It's not hard to find sources who tell you he quit because he couldn't continue to work in the conference's toxic atmosphere.
Long-time official Dave Cutaia worked at the conference headquarters as the Head of Officiating under two different Pac-12 commissioners -- Tom Hansen and Larry Scott. Cutaia, whose tenure spanned 2007-11, said there was a shift in work environment as Scott's regime took over and Dixon came on the scene.
"Tom would ask questions about officiating if he had questions, or thought something was incorrect, but Tom never interfered," Cutaia said. "He'd make recommendations, but he never advised me to 'Do this' or 'Do that.' The change of environment was noticeable. Under Larry Scott, there was more direct involvement with officiating than under Tom Hansen."
Cutaia said he was never asked to steer the outcome of a game or a individual call. But he felt the conference was more "hands-on" and worked to control public perception of its officiating. He also said Dixon should not have involved himself in an instant-replay decision.
"It was extremely troubling," Cutaia said. "It was troubling to me. I don't know the call on the field, I haven't talked with anybody about it, but it is troubling. Whether it be the Pac-12 or ACC or any conference, anything out of the officiating structure is problematic.
"Never should you be getting a call from outside the officiating structure telling you to 'do A' or to 'do B.'"
It makes Dixon's actions on Sept. 21 during the WSU-USC game more alarming.
"Woodie's held in very high regard by our schools," Scott said weeks after the incident. "He's held in high regard nationally, and by me. There was a mistake that was made here, there's no question about that and we've taken corrective action."
What was the mistake?
"The mistake was leaving any doubt about who makes our replay decisions and weighing in in a way that our replay officials thought they were being instructed to make a call," Scott said.
None of this would have been problematic for the Pac-12 had Yahoo Sports not obtained a copy of the replay report filed after the game. In it, replay official Gary McNanna made an unusual notation. He indicated that he believed there should have been a targeting call but "unfortunately a third party did not agree," with the call.
Scott could have helped himself, too, if he hadn't immediately issued a statement denying there was "a third party" involved. It was a stance the conference commissioner clumsily abandoned days later. One that also cost him within the halls of his own offices. Members of his staff wondered to each other whether his initial position was a case of Scott being foolish, arrogant or a combination of both.
Days later, in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive Scott said that he wasn't sure if an instant replay manual for the conference existed. Then, days later, the commissioner announced he'd looked into it, and was certain there was not an instant replay manual.
"There's an NCAA rule in writing," he said, "but there is no manual."
Hours later, The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained a copy of an 11-page publication titled, "The Pac-12 Conference Instant Replay Manual."
The document was explicit about which party has the authority on instant-replay calls. It reads: "The Replay Official is the only person in the booth with the authority to make a decision on a play, however all reviews will occur as a collaborative effort with the centralized replay command center in San Francisco."
In a statement, the Pac-12 said the 11-page document is an operations guide for replay staff, not an instant-replay manual.
Dixon continues to work within a few feet of the command center on game days. The conference says he has a job to do as its football supervisor. But given what's transpired, Dixon's presence just a few feet away from the replay process he once disrupted is a bad look.
Scott said: "I'm not aware of any other incident where our replay officials have had a concern."
Why the replay officials thought Dixon was ordering them to change their call on Sept. 21 isn't a mystery to some who work in the conference headquarters. To them, the whole mess was just another symptom of a troubling top-down culture.
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In March 2017, during the Pac-12 men's basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the conference staff was alerted that Larry Scott would soon make a major announcement.
There was about to be news. Big news, some thought.
Staffers buzzed in anticipation and speculated that Scott had finally closed the Pac-12 Network's long-awaited distribution deal with DirecTV. Then, a video was distributed to employees featuring Scott, in a solo shot, with the Las Vegas strip pictured behind him on a green screen.
The big news? Scott announced that he was getting a five-year contraction extension from the Pac-12 CEO Group. Scott looked delighted. He informed his staff that they'd get to continue the work they'd started through 2022.
It didn't play well.
Especially not with lower paid staffers living in downtown San Francisco, some two or three to a high-rent apartment. But the moment emphasized how out of touch the upper-management team at the Pac-12 headquarters could often be.
The Pac-12 conducted an employee survey in 2016 in the name of measuring its corporate culture and workplace satisfaction.
Walker, the head of communications, called the survey "good governance and best practice for best-in-class organizations." But the staff saw survey as a chance to vent.
The results of the survey were a shock to upper management. The data indicated a surprising amount of dissatisfaction from staffers.
Pac-12 top management was criticized by employees for failing to leave their offices and integrate with staff, among other things.
Said one former employee: "There was a constant divide in that building."
Scott and his five-highest paid lieutenants make $8.4 million a year in annual compensation. Woodie Dixon makes $587,141 - higher compensation than the conference presidents at UCLA, Colorado and Washington State. Also, light-years in front of what the replay officials, who are contractors and Dixon's subordinates, are paid for a day's work.
"He's got seniority in the organization," Scott explained.
Dixon exercised it on Sept. 21.