Musings from Arledge: Mike Bohn, Nick Saban and NIL

Again?

Just when it seemed as if USC’s athletic department finally had steady, professional leadership – leadership that it had been lacking for so many years – we’re treated to a shocking resignation (or termination) and swirling rumors, some of which raise the possibility that USC will get yet another, very public black eye. We know that a law firm investigation was involved. We know the lawyer in charge has expertise investigating the very type of scandal that USC can’t afford. The LA Times has offered snippets of information: comments and maybe behavior that allegedly made female employees uncomfortable, possibly an inattentiveness to job duties, and maybe – and this would truly be shocking – questionable behavior that goes back many years before Bohn’s time at USC, which, if true, suggests that USC failed miserably in its due diligence when hiring Bohn.

We don’t know enough to form any real conclusions yet. It’s too early for an intelligent analysis – or even my usual type of analysis. For now, we have only rumors, and I don’t want to traffic in rumors. The few details the Times has reported are too vague, and the source is unknown. I know from many years as a litigator that the unsupported conclusions of a single source – which may be all we have right now – are not to be trusted without corroboration and specific, supporting facts. 

For now, we can only hope that when the facts come out, they are not too sordid, that there are no injured victims left behind, and that USC’s leadership didn’t drop the ball – again – in failing to vet a candidate properly or in failing to act promptly to serious misconduct. But these things will become public soon enough. So we’ll wait. 

We are also left hoping that USC will not blow this next hire. Our institution has a long history of making terrible, head-scratching decisions that leave the USC family and the outside world bewildered. We thought the hiring of Mike Bohn and Lincoln Riley showed that those days are behind us. We’ll see. I’d normally insert a joke here about USC scouring old football rosters to see whether there is an underemployed star of yesteryear to whom we can offer the job. But, frankly, I’m too scared to make the joke.

We do know that the next athletic director will take over at a time of dramatic change for college sports in general and for USC in particular. USC, like everybody else, will have to continue to work through what to do about NIL and its earth-shattering implications for major-college football and basketball. They will have to address the push by the National Labor Relations Board to make college athletes university employees. They will have to figure out what to do about USC’s still-outdated athletic facilities. They will have to make specific decisions about how much support – and money – to give USC’s football program, including whether USC is committed to competing with the Alabamas and Georgias of the world and, if so, how we find the resources and the strategies to do it. They will have to deal with the push – now in its infancy, but it’s coming, believe me – to have collective bargaining for college athletes. They will have to assume a leadership role in the Big 10 despite USC’s new-guy status, and that means all kinds of decisions about the major topics of the day, including future conference expansion. They will – and maybe this is just me – have to block Oregon’s entry into the Big 10, so Oregon football can die the death it so richly deserves.

This is a time of upheaval and change. A time when it will not be enough to hire an athletic director who is a competent administrator with a solid enough character not to embarrass the university. USC will need someone with vision and foresight, someone with the political skills to work with new conference colleagues – who are used to working with each other but don’t know really know us – to achieve USC’s goals, someone with the backbone, credibility, and political dexterity to work internally to make sure that USC’s efforts to build an elite football program are not sabotaged by other university power centers that may not be aligned with that goal, someone who has the wisdom to understand where college sports are heading, where USC should be going, and how to get everybody on board with that plan. 

The next guy probably won’t have to hire a head football or basketball coach anytime soon. I hope. But the decisions he or she will have to make are probably a lot harder than hiring a coach.

And you can be sure there will be immense pressure, internal and external, to hire a new athletic director for reasons that most fans of USC’s athletic programs would not recognize as legitimate. Do not forget, universities have many powerful actors with widely disparate interests, many of whom do not share the fans’ goals, and there will be pressure to make a decision that is not necessarily consistent with success on the field. Success on the field is not the key consideration for many. Don’t forget: it was only a few years ago that USC was content to let its historic football program suffer under the leadership of a gross incompetent merely because those in power were convinced that the incompetent would not show up to work drunk or grope anybody.  

While we wait – and worry – I will say think you to Mike Bohn. That may be premature. I don’t know all of the facts that led to his dismissal. It may be that he needed to leave; it may be that he should never have been hired in the first place. We’ll see. But, for now, I know that his hiring, the hiring of what appeared to be a real-life, actual, professional athletic director – a mythical creature for USC fans after many decades in which spottings of competent athletic directors were less frequent than spottings of Bigfoot – was the critical first step in bringing USC football back to relevance. Without Bohn, there is no Lincoln Riley, no Caleb Williams, probably no escape from the dying Pac-12, no optimism, almost certainly no hope for a playoff berth in 2023 – no joy – at all – in Trojanville. 

I’ll have more to say as the facts come out and the replacement candidates start to appear. For now, buckle up, Trojans. 

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All of the rest of this was written before the Bohn news, and it seems rather anti-climactic now. Still, there are other important issues bubbling about, many of which the new athletic director will have to address.

In that vein, ESPN.com had an interesting article on Nick Saban’s tirade against Jimbo Fisher about paying players to sign with A&M and who his true audience was. The author’s thesis was that Saban wasn’t really talking to Jimbo Fisher; he was talking to Alabama’s supporters, who Saban believed needed to contribute more money in order to compete in the new recruiting landscape.

This article raises a number of important issues, many of them relevant to USC’s recruiting efforts.

The first, and the most amusing, even if not truly critical to USC, is the shameless dishonesty in Saban’s rant. The article is very clear that Alabama was paying the pay-for-play game, they just didn’t have the resources to pay as effectively as Texas A&M, which has been the national leader for decades in spending huge gobs of money and getting almost nothing in return. Aggies boosters spend money like Richard Pryor in Brewster’s Millions, like it’s their sole goal to throw away as much money as possible and have absolutely nothing to show for it. 

But in ripping on Fisher’s wildly successful efforts to buy a recruiting class, Saban was pretending that pay-for-play was a game that Alabama was not willing to play. It was beneath their moral standards. But, in reality, the only issue is that Jimbo had a bigger checking account, and Alabama kept losing bidding wars. It’s also Paul Dee-esque when you think about it.

But there are some important issues for USC fans. First, it seems clear that if you’re recruiting class is purely mercenary – as Fisher’s was – those players are unlikely to have any loyalty to you or your program. If somebody else offers competitive pay the next year, and if your program is a poorly coached, full-scale grease fire – like Fisher’s is – you may not be able to hold onto your highly ranked mercenaries. When I mentioned A&M boosters spending money on Brewster’s Millions I wasn’t kidding: they’re paying ten figures a year for Fisher, who can’t win anything, and they paid many tens of millions to land a recruiting class that is largely, at this point, gone, lost to the greener pastures of the transfer portal. Ouch.

Second, if you Nick Saban and Alabama are playing this game, the rest of the south must be.  Georgia isn’t out-recruiting Alabama if Alabama is offering upfront cash and Georgia is not. It’s one thing to compete for guys who feel comfortable they’re going to get paid – guys like Malachi Nelson. It’s one thing to compete for guys that are trying to decide between USC and, say, ASU. You can make a compelling argument that over the long run you’ll get more NIL money, more wins, and more NFL money playing for Lincoln Riley than whoever coaches ASU. (I looked it up. It’s Kenny Dillingham, the teenage wonder from Dan Lanning’s staff at Oregon.)

USC will consistently lose most of the head-to-head recruiting battles with Ohio State, Georgia, and Alabama if they are unwilling to meet the price point of those other programs. When you’re recruiting against those programs, you can’t often win by pointing out that the player will be at a better program or get better coaching or have a better chance to win or get more attention. Those programs offer what USC offers, and lately, they’ve offered a lot more of it. If their cherry on top is a million bucks, and if USC won’t give cash for signing on the bottom line, USC is going to struggle some, and it’s going to miss on high-end recruits that it might otherwise sign.

Lincoln Riley must know that. He must know that USC will be a top-10 recruiting program, not a top-3 recruiting program, with this strategy. And he has apparently decided that it’s okay. Maybe he sees what happened with Jimbo and thinks this strategy will fail. Maybe he figures he can plug the holes with star transfers and that his strategy over the last two years will continue to be the primary strategy.

He may also think the pay-for-play game hurts locker-room culture. But Nick Saban apparently disagrees, and that should be entitled to significant weight. He may also think that pay-for-play is against the rules. But in light of how widespread it is, and how powerless the NCAA is, I’m not sure why this matters. If Lincoln Riley wants to be a PED-free cyclist in the heyday of Lance Armstrong, he can. But he won’t be wearing many yellow jerseys.

Lincoln Riley is a gambler. We know that. He left a top-five job to take on USC after Clay Helton had spent six seasons burning it to the ground. He kept Alex Grinch when everybody in the world (except, perhaps, Grinch) would have understood hiring a new defensive coordinator. Those were major gambles. His position on NIL is another. I won’t bet against Riley. He’s too smart, and he’s been far too successful before the age of 40 to do that. But I also don’t expect many Pete Carroll level recruiting classes. If Riley has decided not to play the game of guaranteed money for high school players, some of those blue chippers who would have considered USC, are just not obtainable.

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The Pac-12 conference is trail blazing now. The conference has decided to provide more access to coaches, players, and pregame activities, including putting mics on coaches. Or so we’re told.

Look, I’m all in favor, I suppose. But I don’t really believe it. Lincoln Riley doesn’t want players’ parents or longtime fans watching his practices. You think he’s going to allow ESPN to put a mic on him during games? You think he wants his play calls and strategy to be televised live? I don’t buy it.

The conference needs to be something to generate interest and make networks happy. I’m told the CW digs a good coach mic. But more access to coaches usually means more coach-speak BS. It’s commonplace for sideline reporters to ask coaches questions at halftime. When this started, people probably expected to learn something interesting and valuable from the interviews. They don’t. Nobody ever does. Coaches aren’t going to give away anything of value that might help their opponents.

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I’m weighing whether I want to do an oral history of the Pete Carroll years. Forcing all of you to go through the disastrous Post-Pete years was probably unkind, so I may get to it. In the meantime, send me your request for topics. If they’re good, you can have a share of my royalties.

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I’m interviewing former USC quarterback Shane Foley next week on Musings from Arledge Solo Edition. We planned to talk about Lincoln Riley, Caleb Williams, and the USC offense. We probably still will. But I’m guessing there may be other topics to discuss now. Check it out.