After a decade of endless soap operas, scandals and football mediocrity, USC fans finally got to spend a couple of years enjoying the fruits of an ostensibly functional athletic department. Under AD Mike Bohn — hired in 2019 from Cincinnati, snapping a long succession of ex-jocks masquerading as athletics directors — USC lured Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, announced its audacious jump to the Big Ten and enjoyed a resurgence in both women’s and men’s basketball. USC athletics finally felt … stable.
Advertisement
Turns out it was a mirage.
Bohn is out, with university president Carol Folt announcing Friday she has accepted his resignation “effective today.” Of course, when someone leaves a job of their own volition, they do so immediately and announce it on a Friday afternoon.
Folt mentioned that in preparation for moving to the Big Ten, USC “conducted a thorough review of the athletics department, including its operations, culture, and strategy.” That’s a totally normal thing to do when somebody’s job is safe.
Alas, the Los Angeles Times reported later Friday that USC had hired an external law firm specializing in “sexual harassment and misconduct” allegations to investigate the athletic department’s workplace culture, during which staffers raised concerns about Bohn. More specific details likely will emerge in the coming days and weeks.
It’s time to reset your “Days since the USC athletics department embarrassed itself” count to zero.
USC now finds itself without an athletic director barely more than a year before its Big Ten membership becomes official. Riley, who brings back Heisman-winning quarterback Caleb Williams and will field a team this fall with legitimate College Football Playoff aspirations, is now without a boss. And executive searches like the one Folt must now embark on generally take months.
All of it is less than ideal.
And Folt now faces immense pressure to hire a rock-solid new athletics director — something USC has failed to do in at least 30 years — because the school is embarking on the most consequential athletics moment in its modern history.
There’s no understanding of the enormity of the school’s Big Ten move, one filled with a million logistical challenges and extreme competitive risks. Plenty of schools have changed conferences through the years, but no Power 5 program with national championship aspirations has up and moved to a league headquartered 2,000 miles to the east. Hiring the right leader to oversee those efforts will be essential.
Advertisement
There is a long list of programs during the past decade that went chasing gold and in doing so racked up losses. Here’s looking at you, Nebraska. Or West Virginia. Or Colorado. Or Rutgers. The good news for USC is its games no longer will be relegated to Pac-12 Network or played in the middle of the night on the East Coast. The bad news is if the Trojans faceplant, many millions more will be watching.
More than ever, success in not just football but in all of its sports will require near-perfect administrative alignment between all facets of the university community. There were signs even before Friday’s news that Bohn had not been leading the tightest ship.
GO DEEPER
USC AD Mike Bohn resigns
The first sign of trouble for Bohn actually may have come last summer, when his long-time right-hand man, Brandon Sosna, left for the Detroit Lions. A May 2022 story on The Athletic detailed Sosna’s knee-deep involvement in both landing Riley and aiding his transition. Sosna also was heavily involved in USC’s early initiatives around NIL — all of which have since been scrapped.
Bohn at times appeared to be floundering to adjust to college sports’ new landscape. While outwardly supportive of athletes’ ability to earn NIL income, behind the scenes he reportedly was at odds with his constituents. At least four different collectives have popped up since August 2022, when a Los Angeles Times story said Bohn “refused to acknowledge the existence” of a group named Student Body Right. That one and others already have come and gone. The latest, House of Victory, was announced just last month.
Now the two people in the athletic department most directly involved in both Riley’s hire and the Big Ten move are gone. Someone new will have to come in and get up to speed in a hurry. Their job will be to lead USC to a new era of athletics glory.
And preferably do it without generating yet another round of embarrassing headlines.
(Top photo: Keith Birmingham / MediaNews Group / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
