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Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott took to the stage earlier this month in the epicenter of show biz. A stone's throw away, tourists forked over a few bucks for maps to the stars and followed the Walk of Fame past Hollywood's famed Chinese Theatre, still dressed up after a recent movie premiere.
Scott's conference, meanwhile, is losing at the box office.
And after being shut out of last season's college football playoff — a scenario that is not hard to imagine happening again this season — and lagging behind the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten in revenue, the Pac-12 needs to make up ground.
"We don't want to rest on our laurels," Scott told reporters in Hollywood. "We have to stay laser focused. How do we create more revenue? … I think we've made the big leap, but we've got to keep pushing."
The Pac-12 reported a 17 percent increase in total revenue from FY14 to FY15 (the latest tax filings the conference has made available to the public), bringing in more than $439 million. In turn, the conference doled out $25.1 million on average to each of its schools last year, up from $20.8 million the year prior.
The Southeastern Conference, meanwhile, raked in more than $527 million in FY15, according to its filings. And the Big Ten managed to hand out $32.4 million to its schools on average.
In Salt Lake City, longtime Utah athletic director Chris Hill sees both the good and bad of the situation.
"As a conference, it's a little bit disconcerting that some of these other leagues are generating significantly more money than us," Hill said. "Having said that, at the University of Utah we've never been at the top of our league and I think we've been able to perform higher than our actual funding is. So we've learned to bridge that gap."
Life in the middle of the Power 5 pecking order isn't all bad, to be sure. The Big 12, with its announcement this week that it would explore expansion, and the Atlantic Coast Conference, through the creation of a conference television network, are playing catchup too.
And these are all problems any Group of 5 school would love to have.
"There is growing separation, but that doesn't mean you compete and win," CBS Sports' college football analyst Jon Solomon said. "You've just got to be smart with your money."
But as the tradition-rich programs of the SEC and the Big Ten have widened the gap between the Pac-12 and themselves, it has created greater concerns about retaining coaches and winning recruiting battles, even within the conference's footprint. As one recent ESPN analysis suggested, "the Pac-12 is losing its grip on elite recruits within the region."
To make matters worse, the Pac-12 is still hunting for its first football title since 2004 and was shut out of the NCAA's four-team championship completely last season.
On a hot day in California last week, Scott played it cool.
"I think where our teams have comparable records to other teams from other conferences, we'll get the benefit of the doubt and get more than our fair share of teams in the playoff," he said.
Still, it had to sting a little.
After all, a bigger slice of the revenue pie and more bites at football championships is exactly why the conference expanded to add Colorado and Utah five years ago.
A half decade later, the move has been a resounding success for the Utes. Just take a quick tour of the school's new $36 million basketball facility or drive up 500 South and check out the $13.5 million video board at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where on Saturdays this fall you might catch some highlights of a four-star linebacker recruit who flipped his commitment from Ole Miss of the SEC to come to Salt Lake City.
"The vast majority of our football team would not be on our football team had we not had the Pac-12 affiliation," Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham said. "There's no doubt. That's just a fact. I can say that with absolute certainty."
But has it lived up to the conference's expectations?
"I think it's accomplished what they wanted," Pac-12 analyst Glenn Parker said, "But I think it has not accomplished the ultimate goal: win a national title."
A season ago, a two-loss Stanford team won the Pac-12 title but missed out on the playoff and a chance at a national championship — and some worry the conference could be in line for a similar disappointment this season.
"It's early, but I don't see a great team this year," analyst Nick Alioti said. "I see about six or seven kind of equal teams. … When I see a bunch of teams kind of being the same, it's going to be hard, unfortunately, for one of those teams to make it to the final four."
It all matters to the bottom line: The Pac-12 brought in $80 million from post-season bowls and $30 million from championships and other events in FY15. The SEC grossed more than $162 million from postseason events.
But while one playoff appearance won't leapfrog the Pac-12 past the football-crazed worlds of the SEC and the Big Ten, the league could also use a bit of an ego boost after missing out on the fun last season.
"The next step for them is they need to get in the playoff and, at some point, they need to win," Solomon said, "to boost perception, to boost TV interest, to boost fan interest."
As he kicked of Media Days in Southern California, Scott extolled the virtues of his "conference of champions" — proudly boasting about its NCAA titles (10) and its bowl appearances (10) last season. But Olympic sports and lesser bowls won't move the needle all that much.
Neither will the conference's most recent broadcasting announcements: a plan to stream live more than 150 of the conference's Olympic sporting events via Twitter and agreements with broadcasting companies Frontier and Cox to carry the Pac-12 Network. The latter will give the conference more viewers in Southern California and Arizona, though negotiations with DirecTV remain at an impasse. Up to now, the network — event heavy and funded entirely by the conference — hasn't generated the revenue expected by officials and has quickly fallen behind the SEC and Big Ten networks.
Still, Scott doesn't see the situation as dire, especially compared to the state of the conference when he took over as its commissioner in 2009.
"It's not the same. We were so far behind prior to the TV deal," he said. "We've been through a dramatic transformation and have added huge resources to our schools as well as exposure."
But make no mistake, as other the top-tier conferences continue to grow, the pressure is on the Pac-12 to keep up the pace.
Twitter: @aaronfalk League revenue for the fiscal year 2015
SEC • $527.3 million
Big Ten • $448.8 million
Pac-12 • $439 million
ACC • $403.1 million
Big 12 • $267.7 million