• USA Today, Wednesday, August 25, 2010 10:55 AM

Kelly Whiteside writes that it's hard to figure out when college athletic conferences became "brands" but the transition from motley collection of a few teams to "a brand to be marketed, sold, downloaded and tweeted" is quite clearly complete.

Leading the pack -- or the Pac, we should say -- is the expanded and renamed Pac-12 conference under the leadership of commissioner Larry Scott, who brought his football coaches to New York for a media blitz in late July that included their ringing the opening bell on Wall Street and unveiling a new logo. A movie trailer about the league played on the big screen in Times Square.

Scott ran the WTA Tour for six years before taking over the then Pac-10 last summer. He has hired Danette Leighton to be CMO and Creative Artists Agency to help with marketing and TV deals.

"Part of the reason for thinking about the conference as a brand is to provide some equity to lift the other schools," Scott says. "There is a real role a conference can play that can provide a higher-level platform."

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