USC’s next AD must know the importance of NIL collectives
The USC Trojans saw a bombshell drop when Mike Bohn stepped down amid an investigation, causing even more drama around the program.
Now, the Trojans have to find another AD to fill his shoes, and it won’t be an easy decision. Which direction do they go? Moreover, does school president Carol Folt get to choose the next athletic director after questions swirled around her vetting process for hiring Mike Bohn back in 2019?
It’s a shame, especially with Bohn making a major push to bring Lindsay Gottlieb and Lincoln Riley to town. USC had been building momentum on several fronts, but reality has set in about Bohn’s failures on the job. The Trojans are, in some ways, starting over.
We have detailed a few possible candidates, including Pat Chun, and it’s too bad Brandon Sosna didn’t stick around at USC. He left for the NFL’s Detroit Lions, and it’s unclear if he will want to pursue this job.
However, Stewart Mandel of The Athletic mentioned some possible candidates. He also revealed the importance of this job and what the next athletic director needs to do in order to be successful at USC:
“USC needs to make a rock-star hire both to shepherd the move to the Big Ten and, as C.G. suggested, make sure Riley is taken care of. As I wrote last week, USC’s NIL initiatives have been incredibly clunky, in large part because Bohn himself pushed back hard against the advent of collectives. Riley will not be able to build a national championship program without comparable operations to the ones at not just Georgia and Alabama but Oregon, which has the best-funded, most organized collective on the West Coast. The next AD needs to be fully aware and accepting of the new landscape, which Bohn clearly was not,” Mandel wrote.
