Tag: Carol Folt

Why USC’s timeline for new AD hire might be longer than previously thought

USC, by bringing in some big hitters from the world of college sports administration, might not be in any hurry to hire an AD.

The news broke last week that USC hired a temporary administrator (not an interim athletic director) to handle the athletic department. This move was accompanied by the hire of a transition team comprised of major power players in college sports.

We wrote about these moves last week:

“In order to replace Bohn’s working knowledge of the Big Ten and the vision Bohn had for USC’s move to a new conference, Folt has brought aboard a transition team of consultants: former Cal and Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour, former Duke chief financial officer Mitch Moser, and former Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg.

“These are all heavy hitters with ample high-level experience in college sports administration. You will note that the Barbour-Moser-Weiberg trio has connections to every Power Five conference other than the SEC: Barbour to the Pac-12 and Big Ten, Moser to the ACC, Weiberg to the Big 12.”

What does this mean for the timeline attached to the USC AD search? Consultant Tony Altimore explained midway through the most recent edition of Trojan Conquest Live, the USC YouTube show which airs Sundays at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific, at The Voice of College Football.

Spoiler alert: This search might take a little more time than previously expected, but let Tony offer the fuller explanation below.

The next episode of Trojan Conquest Live airs on Sunday, June 4, at 8 Eastern and 5 Pacific. The special guest on this Sunday’s show will be USC legend Anthony Munoz. He joins co-hosts Tim Prangley and Rick Anaya for a one-hour conversation you won’t want to miss!

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USC President Carol Folt names interim administrator, Big Ten transition team

Carol Folt has initiated not only a transition phase for USC’s athletic department, but for the school’s move to the #B1G.

We have finally seen some internal movement within the USC administration and the school’s athletic department after the resignation of previous athletic director Mike Bohn. USC President Carol Folt has made some moves to create multiple transition teams to serve as a bridge to the selection of the school’s permanent athletic director.

On Wednesday evening, Folt released a letter to the athletic department detailing her plans. Dr. Denise Kwok, executive senior associate athletic director, has been named the interim executive administrator of the athletic department.

Meanwhile, a Big Ten transition team has been created by Folt, given that Mike Bohn’s expertise with — and involvement in — the move to the Big Ten is no longer something the Trojans can draw from with Bohn out the door. In order to replace Bohn’s working knowledge of the Big Ten and the vision Bohn had for USC’s move to a new conference, Folt has brought aboard a transition team of consultants: former Cal and Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour, former Duke chief financial officer Mitch Moser, and former Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg.

These are all heavy hitters with ample high-level experience in college sports administration. You will note that the Barbour-Moser-Weiberg trio has connections to every Power Five conference other than the SEC: Barbour to the Pac-12 and Big Ten, Moser to the ACC, Weiberg to the Big 12.

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If you could interview USC AD candidates, which questions would you ask?

Hiring the right candidate is the main point, but ensuring a candidate succeeds is done by asking the right Qs in the job interview.

We have spent plenty of time focusing on the candidates USC President Carol Folt can and should consider in her search for the next athletic director of Trojan athletics. To be sure, picking the right candidate is the ultimate point. Getting someone who can blend Mike Bohn’s talent for picking great coaches with a personal ability to provide better leadership, organization, and management in office settings — without drama or controversy — is the goal for USC. Getting the good parts of Mike Bohn without his negatives is Carol Folt’s pursuit.

Naturally, the conversation will gravitate toward the names of the top candidates USC should look at. To be sure, that’s important. Yet, Folt and USC — like any other school considering a huge hire — can significantly improve the odds that their new hire will do a great job if they ask the right questions in the interview room.

Let’s explore this point a little more, noting that we mentioned it on our recent live show with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football.

As you look at the questions we raise below, ask yourself: “If I could interview USC’s next AD candidate, what questions would I ask?”

Here we go:

Trojans Wire joins national YouTube show to discuss USC athletic director job

We talked to @MarkRogersTV at the @VoiceofCFB about the #USC athletic director search and a lot more.

The USC Trojans need a new athletic director. They still haven’t appointed an interim or acting athletic director (as of Wednesday morning). So, any exploration of the candidates, the big board, and the various categories of candidates is still relevant and timely for any USC fan.

We looked at some of the dimensions of the USC athletic director search, and we also analyzed both the downfall of Mike Bohn and his undeniable talent in hiring great sports coaches for USC athletics, in our newest live show with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football.

We also looked at the mess in the Big Ten with its television deal and how former commissioner Kevin Warren seemed to get out while the going was good. He did not leave behind an orderly and fully aligned situation, but as we note on the show, the checks are going to cash for the conference’s TV deals, and that’s why Warren will not be severely punished for his sloppy management.

Subscribe to, like, and share the USC channel at The Voice of College Football. Join as a member at the middle or top membership tiers and get exclusive bonus segments with Trojans Wire.

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USC athletic director search: the ‘make them say no first’ list for Carol Folt

#USC’s AD search can be divided into several tiers of candidates. Consultant @TJAltimore has details. Force these 6 to say no first.

Much like a coaching search, the search for a new athletic director or any top candidate for a very important leadership position within a university should have a few tiers.

There are the exciting, young, new candidates who might offer a fresh perspective if it is needed. There are outsiders on the rise who might give new energy and vision to a job. There are proven veterans in the profession who offer needed experience. There are in-house candidates who might want the job and have the institutional knowledge needed to bring about a smooth transition. There are candidates who might simply meet the moment in terms of knowing how to handle a specific set of current or upcoming challenges. Then there are the rock stars, the people you simply have to make a phone call to and force them to say no.

Consultant Tony Altimore has his big board for the USC athletic director search, dividing candidates into several different tiers on Sunday night’s edition of Trojan Conquest Live with co-hosts Tim Prangley and Rick Anaya. You can watch the full show, but in the meantime, let’s look at different tiers of candidates from Tony, starting with the people Carol Folt simply has to make a call to. She has to force these people to turn down the job:

Troubling details emerge about Mike Bohn’s management of USC athletics

.@Ryan_Kartje of @LATimesSports produced detailed reporting on the deeper story inside #USC athletics.

What has happened inside the walls of the USC athletic department under former athletic director Mike Bohn’s leadership? Speculation flew across the internet and the USC community when the explosive news of Bohn’s abrupt resignation hit the wires on Friday afternoon. Just exactly what was going on, and why?

We don’t have all the answers, and more details are probably going to be revealed in the coming days and weeks, but we at least know what the fundamental issue was and is.

Ryan Kartje of the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that according to multiple sources inside the USC athletic department, Bohn made inappropriate remarks about the physical appearance of female colleagues. Additional sources told Kartje that Bohn did not attend meetings he was supposed to attend.

Kartje pointed out that on Thursday, Bohn and USC were asked by the L.A. Times about internal department criticisms of Bohn’s management and leadership practices. The fact that Bohn submitted his resignation on Friday, one day later, is notable.

Let’s go through a number of the details raised by the Times’ reporting on this story:

How Twitter reacted to Notre Dame-USC: Trojans side

Lot of happy people in Los Angeles and beyond.

If you’re a USC fan, you have to be feeling high and mighty right about now. The Trojans’ 38-27 win over Notre Dame meant a lot of things. It snapped a skid over their biggest rival, and it provided more Caleb Williams fodder for the Heisman Trophy voters. On top of that, this win, coupled with LSU’s loss to Texas A&M, put them in position to make the College Football Playoff provided they win the Pac-12 title game.

The Trojans are nationally relevant for the first time in years, and their fans will tell you it was worth the wait. They already are prepared to induct Williams into their Heisman quarterback club alongside Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer. Even with the stiff competition the playoff is sure to have, the confidence for both the Trojans and their supporters has to be through the roof. After reading these tweets, it’s hard to think otherwise:

USC President Carol Folt represents the rot in our leadership class

A tuition hike in a pandemic is disgraceful.

I have remarked over the past week in multiple columns — there has been so much to say — that while the federal government is the main reason college football is imperiled (and done for the fall at the Pac-12 and in the other conferences which have opted out of the fall season), school presidents own a significant chunk of the blame.

School presidents have plainly been unsuccessful in convincing their representatives and Senators in Congress to pass robust spending packages. How much of an effort did they even make? Aren’t these people supposed to be the expert schmoozers, the people who can lean on other influential figures and get them to deliver important resources in crucial moments? If they did try, they didn’t try very successfully.

Universities and their communities needed actual resources if the coronavirus was going to get subdued to the extent necessary to facilitate college football. We can plainly see the government didn’t even come close. School presidents obviously weren’t responsible for passing actual bills, but they didn’t have any effect on Congress, which represents political weakness and impotence.

That was — and is — a primary failure of university presidents in this pandemic.

The other especially big failure by school presidents: Not reducing tuition for students, even with on-campus instruction being reduced or eliminated in the pandemic. We noted this point at Harvard earlier in the year, while making the larger point that a number of schools (not just Ivy League universities, either) were trying to squeeze profits out of students despite not being able to offer a typically full menu of services and opportunities to students.

Now we have to make note of this same basic point at home — at USC.

President Carol Folt is not serving students in a pandemic. She is serving the profit engine and plainly contradicting her own words.

Kudos to editorialist Stuart Carson and the student journalists at the Daily Trojan. Carson rightly excoriated Carol Folt in a scathing column on Wednesday. You should read it. I won’t repeat Mr. Carson’s arguments because you need to appreciate them in their original context. They are sharply articulated.

I will only excerpt this part of the column, a direct quote from President Folt herself:

“Above all, we want to make sure that all our students continue to dream big and act boldly,” Folt said. “You are needed more than ever […] and we’re going to work with you to make your USC experience rewarding and successful in the face of so much uncertainty.”

What a crock of shit.

You want students to be liberated and dream big, but you’re going to insist on maintaining a tuition hike a pandemic? Get lost.

This is the completely out-of-touch mindset which has pervasively infected the leadership class of the country. Congress has dithered — and failed to get a second round of stimulus checks and fresh waves of unemployment assistance sent to citizens — while tens of millions of Americans are living on the edge.

A 3.5-percent tuition hike, compared to Congress’s neglect, might not seem like the most monstrous act one could possibly imagine. However, the root reality of insensitivity to the financial struggles of other people, and specifically the burdens young people are facing at a time when their economic futures look very grim, is manifested in USC’s willingness to maintain a tuition increase in a pandemic.

How utterly greedy. How entirely indifferent to the struggles of young people and their parents.

If this is the best the leadership class has to offer, keeping in mind that USC’s previous president drowned in scandal himself, it’s no wonder we’re in such a mess as a country.

USC also needs to find a president who actually cares about people other than the elites. USC is — in a real sense — a microcosm of what is happening in Washington, D.C., and in the boardrooms of top corporations.

More money for us, say the leaders of large American institutions, even if it means pinching ordinary people in a pandemic.

Carol Folt represents the rot at the heart of our leadership class.