Pac-12 commissioner: Rep wasn't supposed to vote for satellite camp ban

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said his conference's members agreed to vote against the proposal to ban satellite camps, but their voting representative inexplicably veered from the plan.

UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero didn't vote the way the conference expected him to, Scott revealed to reporters Wednesday.

Scott added that his conference came to a near-unanimous decision to vote against the abolition of the camps.

Of the Power 5 conferences, only the Big Ten voted against the ban, which became effective April 8. Several coaches around the country, including Mike Leach of the Pac-12's Washington State, blasted the ban after it was imposed.

"It appears that the selfish interests of a few schools and conferences prevailed over the best interests of future potential student-athletes," Leach said the day it was announced.

Related: Washington State's Leach tells SEC coaches to 'quit being such babies'

In response to the backlash, Guerrero offered his take on the situation to Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated. He said it became clear that one of two proposals presented to the conferences was going to pass. The ACC's proposal would have banned camps entirely, while the SEC's proposal would have allowed schools to hold camps within 50 miles of campus.

However, because the Pac-12 already has a conference-wide ban on satellite camps, Guerrero said he didn't want to give every conference aside from the Pac-12 a recruiting edge.

"My assessment was that one of the two was going to pass, and we didn’t know which one," he said. "I had to vote for 59 because if that failed and 60 passed, Pac-12 schools would have been at a disadvantage."

Guerrero sent an email to his fellow conference members after his vote, which further details his thought process.

The Pac-12 isn't the only conference that cast a controversial ballot. The Sun Belt Conference also voted for the ban, going against the wishes of most of its members. Had the Pac-12 and Sun Belt voted on behalf of the majority of their schools, the ban wouldn't have had enough votes to pass.

NCAA executive vice president Oliver Luck said Monday that the organization is likely to revisit the satellite-camp debate in the future.