One thing you (and we) haven’t heard much about over the past month or so is the status of USC’s search for a new athletic director. That story has not been nearly as much of a source of summer intrigue as the Pac-12’s media rights deal, just to offer a point of comparison.
June of 2023 came and went without much of a peep regarding the athletic director search. The absence of a sitting athletic director certainly didn’t affect USC football recruiting in June — not in a negative way, at least.
USC football analyst Tim Prangley told us that the Trojans “had a record-breaking month, with 12 recruits committing to the Trojans and skyrocketing their On3 and 247 national recruiting rankings to No. 4 and No. 7, respectively. USC finished No. 7 last year, so their high recruiting rankings are not new. However, what has changed recently is their ability to recruit high-level talent in the trenches. Winning football starts up front, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Big Ten. Just ask Ohio State and Ryan Day what Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverine offensive line did to them the past two years. USC is finally getting big, physical, nasty offensive linemen like Makai Saina.”
We’re not saying the AD hire doesn’t matter. It certainly does. It simply hasn’t mattered in the short term.
We talked more about this with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football:
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