Mike Bohn to be announced as new USC Athletic Director Thursday morning

We have reached an end to the USC athletic director search.

Per the Daily Trojan sports, USC will officially announce their new athletic director on Thursday morning. The announcement by USC president Carrol Folt is expected to come at 10 am. While the news release don’t specify who will be the new athletic director, it’s expected to be Cincinnati’s AD Mike Bohn.

It was reported back on Saturday that Bohn was close to a deal that would make him the new athletic director at USC. On Tuesday, multiple reports came out that there was a snag in the process between Folt and Bohn. The ordeal was over the potential of him offering Urban Meyer the head coaching football job in the event of Clay Helton’s firing. However according to Ryan Kartje of the LA Times, there was a matter of waiting for background checks to clear.

The search began in early September after Lynn Swann resigned from his post. Swann has held the position since 2016 and has been under heavy criticism on how he has ran the athletic program. Special advisor to the president Dave Roberts was named as the interim athletic director while USC searched for it’s new athletic director.

Bohn checks off two much needed boxes for the position. He has no ties or connection to the USC, which marks the first time since 1984 the university has done that. Ironically the last athletic director with no ties to the school, Mike McGee, also came from Cincinnati.

Another is that he brings 22 years of experience as an athletic director. Bohn has been the AD at schools such as Idaho, San Diego State, Colorado, and Cincinnati. He’s had success at each of those schools. One important factor here is that Bohn has been in the Pac-12 before and dealt with scandals. When he took over the Colorado athletic director job in 2005, it was a program that was still dealing with the sex scandal that rocked the athletic program in the early 2000’s. Given that USC is in the middle of an FBI scandal with basketball and the bribery scandal that involved former USC water polo coach Jovan Vavic and former USC women's soccer coach Ali Khosroshahin, Bohn could help USC get that black cloud away from the program.

The big question with Bohn will be his ability to fix the USC football program. The Trojans suffered their biggest loss of the season to No. 7 Oregon last weekend 56-24. The noise of hiring current Fox College Football Analyst and former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer which ramp up even more with the official hiring of Mike Bohn. Current USC head coach Clay Helton entered the season potentially on the hot seat after the team went through it’s worst season since 2000, going 5-7 in 2018. The Trojans currently sit at 5-4 with road losses to BYU, Washington, and Notre Dame while being embarrassed at home by Oregon last Saturday. The fate of Helton could be decided should the Trojans lose to the Sun Devils this Saturday.