USC Has A New AD #ncaafootball

Mike Garrett is out, Pat Haden is in as the athletic director at USC according to numerous reports.

Garrett raised big bucks for the school athletic department, and stumbled into the hiring of Pete Carroll as head coach of the football team, and built the beautiful Galen Center, but he was also at the controls when the NCAA came in swinging an axe. He was either complicit in the payment of players like OJ Mayo and Reggie Bush, (unlikely), or was purposefully ignorant of what was taking place in his own backyard for fear of what he might find out if he asked some simple questions, (probable).

However, worse than being intentionally stupid was being brazenly arrogant. A full day hadn’t passed before Garrett went before a group of Trojan boosters and declared,

“As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans.”

Huh? He may as well have dropped his pants while at the podium and relieved himself in front of everyone, it would have had the same effect...he was shown the door. The football program gets slapped down for three years because of rampant cheating, recruiting is damaged for years on your watch and THAT is your response? See ya’.

Years of being secretive, elusive, and hostile towards the media may have worked when the football team went BCS title hunting every year for the better part of a decade, but once you got popped for cheating, you needed to do a little more than go to the ‘Everyone wishes they were us’ card.

As for Pat Haden, it’s both great news and a little scary for the millions of front runners who call themsevles USC football fans. The car flags and license plate frames that dot the city when the Trojans are in the Top Five may be hard to find in the immediate future.

The good news is that Haden is, by almost unanimous account, an honest, hard working, and aboveboard operator. What happened on Garrett’s watch will not happen with Haden as the headman in Heritage Hall.

That's also the bad news.

Corners won’t be cut, agents will not be allowed to roam the sidelines with envelopes stuffed with cash and real estate deeds. Someone will be asking questions, not looking the other direction when someone shows up with a new car.  He is already sending back Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy.

Men’s basketball coach Kevin O’Neill won’t be able to get away with a Tim Floyd-esque, ‘OJ Mayo just called me and said he wanted to play here. Is that cool?’ explanation as to how the country’s most visible and sought after high school basketball player showed up at a school across the country; a school with no basketball pedigree.

Pat Haden might ask a follow up question that Mike Garrett never would. Something along the lines of “What, do I look stupid? I went to Oxford, you idiot. What do you mean OJ wants to play here? How? Who is setting this up? Rodney Guillory? The same guy who screwed us with Jeff Trapagnier? You want to have the NCAA set up shop on campus and have them start asking even more questions? Get the hell out of my office.”

The program will be cleaner, but don’t anticipate it being better. The days of nearly free houses for player’s parents are probably done for a while. Lane Kiffin may have been able to do Lane Kiffin things if Garret was the one looking (or more to the point not looking) over his shoulder. With the NCAA already gutting the Trojans for the next three years, Haden can’t afford to let Kiffin do what he did in Tennessee, namely, play in the NCAA gray areas and hope it goes his way.

USC did the right thing in making a change, Garrett was ultimately responsible for what went down while he was in charge (so is Pete Carroll for that matter), and he needed to go.

Pat Haden is a solid choice. A Trojan, a former athlete, and bright mind (Oxford!). Just don’t expect another run of seven straight BCS games. You need envelopes full of cash and free houses to get that done.

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