Larry Scott carried the mallet, but George Kliavkoff carried the dagger.

The former Pac-12 commissioner put the conference on a collision course with irrelevancy, the soon-to-be Pac-9 commissioner failed to act soon enough and decisively enough to stave off the death blow.

Both men took public posturing to ridiculous levels, somehow pretending with a straight face that the Pac-12 was ever in a position of power.

Hah. Position of power? After reports emerged on Wednesday afternoon that Colorado was planning on leaving the Pac-12 and rejoining the Big 12, the West Coast’s preeminent sports league appears on the verge of combusting.

If just one more shoe drops, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the conference survives. Whether another Four Corners university takes the leap this month or a surprise school like Cal, Stanford, Washington or Oregon makes the move, the Pac-12 does not appear long for this world.

And it deserves it. From failing to expand eastward to Texas and Oklahoma a dozen years ago to the ill-fated Pac-12 Network, from ridiculous efforts to tout successes of minor sports to the current lagging media rights negotiations, at every turn the league has languished. Spend untold millions on a league office doubling as a multimedia production hub in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country, no matter how absurd? Sure, why not.

There’s no pity here, not with billions at stake. But there is some sadness.

This all could have been avoided. Or could it?

Ten years might as well be a million when it comes to the current chaotic college sports landscape. In 2013, the New York Times published a detailed timeline of major college athletic conference expansion and included a line that stands out in hindsight.

“No college has left the SEC, the Pac-12 or the Big Ten for another conference in the modern era. Placement in these elite conferences virtually guarantees national exposure.”

It may be hard to remember those halcyon days, but in 2013, the Pac-12 was only a few years removed from a BCS football championship game appearance by Oregon — a 3-point loss to Cam Newton and Auburn in the 2011 title game, one of the most competitive in history — and still coming down from the highs of the Pete Carroll era at USC.

The conference had just poached the Buffaloes from the Big 12 and Utah from the Mountain West, and with the Pac-12 Network just a year old, the league was riding a wave of positive momentum.

“We are equally excited by the creation of Pac-12 Media Enterprises, which will enable us to launch our own Pac-12 television and digital networks, providing significantly more exposure for women’s sports and Olympic sports in which the Pac-12 excels, in addition to academic and other campus programming of interest to our fan base,” Scott said in a statement announcing the formation of the Pac-12 Network. “These new platforms will also provide us with an unprecedented opportunity to control the distribution of our intellectual property rights in sports, education and other Conference and membership initiatives.”

A decade after the Times’ proclamation of the Pac-12 as an elite conference and a dozen years after the landmark announcement of its own television network, collapse appears imminent.

Scott’s vision for the network never fully materialized, the SEC and the Big Ten took major steps to become the Big Two, and the other Power 5 conferences either pounced on the Pac-12’s ineptitude (Big 12) or at least avoided the major missteps that plagued our beloved conference out west (the ACC).

That landed the league in some murky waters, and Kliavkoff was given a barely bristled broom to mop it up.

If it was Scott’s gamble that landed the Pac-12 in this quagmire, Kliavkoff’s near-constant bluffing hasn’t done much to get it out of the mess.

Just 5 days ago at Pac-12 Media Day in Las Vegas, Kliavkoff was completely tone-deaf in both his opening statement and in his question-and-answer session with the media. First, in his solo screed, he put off any mention of a potential media rights deal and expansion until the very end, and even then, his remarks were stiff and weak.

“I know there’s been never-ending speculation about the timing of our media deals. In the end, we’re on track to announce our deals at about the same time as everyone would have anticipated and predicted before the news of conference realignment,” he said. “The Pac-12 board of directors has met regularly throughout the process and has been united in their commitment to one another and to the Pac-12.

“This commitment and patience will be rewarded with an announcement in the near future. Getting the right deal has always been more important to our board and to the conference than getting the expeditious one.”

Well, no.

Then, in a telling display of both audacity and naivete, Kliavkoff said, “In board meetings in the last year, we constantly update our board. I think they’re enthusiastic, like I am, about the media deal. I will tell you what we’ve seen is the longer we wait for the media deal, the better our options get. I think our board realizes that. There’s an underlying shift in the media market that’s happening. We’re long-term taking advantage of that. Short-term it may have provided some hiccups.”

When asked in a follow-up question about the Big 12 going after Pac-12 programs, Kliavkoff again postured.

“It’s not a concern. Our schools are committed to each other and to the Pac-12,” he said. “We’ll get our media rights deal done, we’ll announce the deal. I think the realignment that’s going on in college athletics will come to an end for this cycle. The truth is we have bigger fish to fry. There are incredible opportunities and also challenges in front of college athletics. I need to be able to work with all of my colleagues in Division I and particularly in the A-5. We’ll do that and move past kind of all the bitter squabbling of the last year and work together to make college athletics better.”

He then finished his session with a confounding back-and-forth that only brought more attention and eyeballs to the unresolved media rights issue.

Q. You just said you’re not announcing a deal today on purpose because you want the attention to be on football.

Kliavkoff: Yep.

Q. To be clear, that would imply that the deal is done and codified, and just you’re waiting until after today.

Kliavkoff: I think you’re reading too much into that.

Q. So then what is the purpose behind not announcing something, which is what you just said?

Kliavkoff: We want to have the focus on football today. We have an incredibly good football story to tell, and we want that to be the focus today.

Egg, meet face.

So here we are, with Scott somewhere probably sipping mimosas and Kliavkoff still wiping the yolk off his cheeks.

Only the yolk is on us, too — Pac-12 fans who care about more than just the teams but the sum of their contributions. Even if Kliavkoff cobbles together a hodgepodge mix of would-be members like San Diego State, SMU, Tulane and even Gonzaga, the league will look drastically different going forward, with more than a century of unity at risk. The league has existed in some shape or form since 1915, and that is something worth rescuing.

It’s on Kliavkoff to act fast to get the rest to stick together. Then go about adding four at once. Get the league back to respectability, and make a push for the east coast. It’s time for bold thinking and decisive action.

Does Kliavkoff have it in him? We’ll see. Let’s just hope he drops the bluffing act.