O/NSO: Michael Corleone edition
The Obvious: It seems so appropriate to recall that old Godfather scene in which Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in anguish says, “Just when I thought I was out. They pull me back in.”
The Not So Obvious: The O/NSO would imagine that USC president Dr. Carol Folt must have felt at some level she was Michael Corleone by the way things appear to have unfolded with the resignation of former athletic director Mike Bohn. Just when Folt thought she was out of the limelight and no longer the focal point of athletic department instability and integrity, she is pulled back into a maelstrom, thanks to the Mike Bohn fiasco.
The Obvious: On Wednesday, Dr. Folt took a big step forward in putting together a USC interim leadership team headed by veteran and respected Trojans’ athletic administrator Dr. Denise Kwok, current executive senior associate athletic director, who will go by the title of interim executive administrator and not the traditional title of interim athletic director.
Dr. Denise Kwok (middle) has been named interim executive administrator for USC athletics.
The Not So Obvious: While the Trojans begin their search for a permanent athletic director, Folt’s interim leadership team besides Kwok includes incoming Provost Andrew Guzman, Senior VP and General Counsel Beon-Soo Kim, from Equity and Compliance Felicia Washington, and Presidential Adviser Mark Merritt. Three key external additions to the leadership team include Sandy Barbour, former athletic director at Tulane, Cal, and Penn State; Mitch Moser, formerly Deputy of Athletics and Resource Development at Duke; and Kevin Weiberg, former commissioner of the Big 12 Conference and former vice president of the Big Ten Network. FYI, Weiberg also worked on the original transition of the Pac-10 to the Pac-12.
Former Big 12 Commissioner and former VP for the Big Ten Network Kevin Weiberg is part of the leadership team.
(Photo above by George Walker/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Obvious: Thanks to the Mike Bohn surprise resignation, if Dr. Carroll Folt was going to be “pulled back in” like Michael Corleone into another athletic mess, she has taken a positive step in hoping to come out on the other side with the naming of a very experienced interim leadership team.
The Not So Obvious: Of course, it still gets down to whom Folt hires for the permanent athletic director’s position, and she should have plenty of good options, as the athletic department is in good shape both on and off the field. The positive perception of AD selection possibilities isn’t even in the same ballpark compared to when Folt had to find a new athletic director when her athletic department was figuratively on fire.
The Obvious: When Dr. Carol Folt arrived at USC as the former Chancellor of the University of North Carolina, she inherited a USC that was undeniably a mess and a national embarrassment both on the academic and athletic front.
The Not So Obvious: We don’t need to go over all the mess Folt was handed when she arrived, but it was beyond substantial. The one glaring hope for a perception fix was the athletic department, which for generations was the beacon of national respect and pride. However, as Folt has come to painfully understand, the notoriety of the USC athletic department, namely its storied football program, is the straw that stirs the national perception drink. No matter how much good comes from its academic rise over the years, it remains the football program that is the golden child.
USC football has always been the pride, joy, and national icon as Dr. Carol Folt has come to learn.
(Photo above by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
The Obvious: Arriving at USC in 2019, Dr. Folt found a near rebellion at hand when it came to both the Trojans’ athletic director at the time and his football coach.
The Not So Obvious: Trying to take it one step at a time, Folt first concentrated working with then AD Lynn Swann, the former legendary Trojan football player and NFL Hall of Famer. That didn’t turn out well at all, as Swann allegedly missed meetings and seemed to treat being the athletic director at USC more like an advocation as opposed to a vocation. Folt gained big points when she decided that “Swannie” had to go. One of the big problems with Swann is that he left having extended the football contract of Clay Helton, arguably the worst USC football coach in the school’s glorious annals.
Dr. Carol Folt was applauded when she got rid of former USC athletic director Lynn Swann.
(Photo above by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
The Obvious: Having gained a standing ovation for dispensing of the tarnished Swann, USC fans, the media, and the general public awaited the anticipated announcement that Clay Helton would be next to be shown the door.
The Not So Obvious: The exit door that everybody was waiting to open for Gentleman Clay didn’t because Folt wanted a permanent athletic director to make the choice and to some degree that made sense. As losing seasons continued and underwhelming wins mounted along with excruciating fan turmoil and media outcry to do something about USC football, the test of Folt’s understanding of USC was front and center. If Helton was the football defendant in an athletic jury trial, the 12-person jury would have voted a unanimous 12-0 guilty vote to have Helton depart the John McKay Center for good.
Clay Helton was finally fired at USC in September of 2021.
(Photo above Leon Bennett/Getty Images)
The Obvious: It has been written in the O/NSO and in our IMHO Sunday columns that Dr. Folt originally had no idea of what USC football really meant nationally and locally.
The Not So Obvious: Whether she was not just a sports fan but a biologist that rose through the administrative ranks, the fact remains she claimed she had an idea of how important USC football was but didn’t seem to be in any sense of urgency to fix something that was very fixable at the time.
The Obvious: To be fair, Dr. Folt had some idea how important a sports program could be on a college campus when she was leading the University of North Carolina prior to coming to USC.
The Not So Obvious: Folt may have believed that UNC basketball along Tabacco Road and the ACC was the equivalent to USC’s football. After all, football at UNC was important, and nothing tops the magnitude of college basketball on the Chapel Hill campus and its storied “Dean Dome.” Once arriving in L.A., Folt claimed she understood the aura of USC football in the Southland. How does the O/NSO know that? She told me at Mike Bohn’s introductory press conference in the McKay Center.
USC president Dr. Carol Folt learned that USC football was like North Carolina basketball but on steroids.
(Photo above by Nick Laham via Getty Images.)
After the Bohn press conference, Folt went on to tell the O/NSO that she was attending the University California at Santa Barbara. While she was at UCSB, John McKay was leading the Trojans to national championships the early 70s. She was aware of the aura of USC football and related to me she never had a chance to come south to attend a USC football game in the Coliseum because she needed to earn money as a waitress to make ends meet.
The Obvious: Carol Folt claimed she understood the depth of passion in Los Angeles for USC football, but it’s apparent to the O/NSO that her passion for USC football was not nearly the passion of the Trojans nation for lack of a better term.
The Not So Obvious: What Folt came to learn through a series of inexperienced lessons, mistakes, and miscalculations was that USC football arguably was one of the three most revered sports properties in L.A. along with the Dodgers and Lakers. She also learned that compared to North Carolina basketball, USC football was a triple dose of expectations and intense area interest.
The Obvious: Given Carol Folt’s own reputation preceding her from North Carolina, the USC athletic department’s image and the school’s questionable support at the highest level for the football program made it extremely difficult to lure a top shelf athletic director from the outside. What was once considered a prime national AD job no longer was in high regard and that might be understating it.
The Not So Obvious: When Folt finally hired an athletic director, it was Mike Bohn from the University of Cincinnati. To be sure, Bohn was not considered on the A-list and probably not the B-list either. At the Bohn press conference, Folt referred to her hire as a man of “integrity.” Although Bohn was not a spectacular or a home run hire, he took on the challenge that many did not want to confront. The guy was a real talker, a salesman with a booming voice, who gave hope that he could turn it all around.
Dr. Folt selected Mike Bohn as her first athletic director after being rejected by A-list candidates.
(Photo above by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Obvious: With Folt finally hiring an athletic director in Mike Bohn, it was believed that the two would then quickly move on the Clay Helton situation and rejuvenate the USC fan base with a new football coach.
The Not So Obvious: Of course, the Helton firing didn’t happen after the 2019 season, and USC continued to flounder, and the program became a fiasco at the highest level. It was leaked that Helton had received a ridiculous contract extension, a gift from Lynn Swann, which included a healthy buyout clause. When word got out about the buyout contract, it created enormous anger and bewilderment from the fan base and the media. The once legendary USC football program had become the Titanic of college football.
As it were, both Bohn and Folt naturally were seen as villains in the USC community. Could it get any worse? Sure, there were some “valid” reasons why the two continued to retain Helton against all logic. To be clear, the O/NSO was told by a powerful booster then and now that if USC wanted to buy out Helton, it could have since a number of those high-powered boosters had given overtures that they’d pay the buyout in order to execute a coaching change and save the program. It was said, however, that Folt didn’t want to be indebted to the boosters and their influence. She was concerned about the boosters being too powerful.
The Obvious: The entire image of Mike Bohn and Carol Folt changed, however, in one shocking announcement that rocked the college football world when it was learned that Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, who had been to three CPF playoffs, would be leaving the Sooners immediately to become the head coach of the USC Trojans.
The Not So Obvious: Nobody saw the Riley hiring coming as other candidates seemed to be in the forefront. In one hiring swoop, Riley broke through and basically changed the image of both Bohn and Folt. Respected as one of the nation’s premier coaches, Lincoln Riley had that kind of public relations power and reputation.
With the hiring announcement of former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, popularity ratings went up for both Dr. Carol Folt and Mike Bohn.
(Photo above L-R Rick Caruso, Dr. Folt, Lincoln Riley, and Mike Bohn/ Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
The Obvious: In Lincoln Riley’s first season at USC in 2022, the Trojans went well beyond expectations and finished the regular season 11-1, and Oklahoma transfer quarterback Caleb Williams became the Trojans’ eighth Heisman Trophy winner.
The Not So Obvious: Although the 2022 season concluded on a sour note with a depressing loss in the Pac-12 title game to Utah and a shocking defeat in the Cotton Bowl at the hands of upstart Tulane, there was a general sense of accomplishment from having been 4-8 in 2021 to finishing 11-3 in 2022. For both Mike Bohn and Carol Folt, they had broken the perception of questions and comments that stalked them prior to the arrival of Lincoln Riley. The 2023 Trojans football program looked to be well on its way to bigger success in 2023 and nationally ranked as high as No. 4 by some media outlets.
The Obvious: With the summer of 2023 approaching, it looked like nirvana in the world of USC athletics, and with the Trojans looking forward to transitioning from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten in 2024, the image of Carol Folt and Mike Bohn had been completely changed…or so we thought. It seemed it would take a major disaster to try and even imagine the USC athletic department descending from the 2022 penthouse to a return to “USC can’t get out of its own way.”
The Not So Obvious: Yet, just when USC athletics were feeling like the good old days, it happened. Last Friday, athletic director Mike Bohn resigned effective immediately. The Los Angeles Times had learned of a prior USC investigation by a law firm into harassment and dereliction of duty by Bohn. It is logical to assume Mike Bohn was on his way out one way or another, but the Friday timing caught everybody surprised.
As for the allegations regarding Bohn, according to an investigative story in the Los Angeles Times, Bohn’s resignation revolved around his alleged treatment of women in the workplace and his general performance as the athletic director. Of course, there were further accusations that Bohn’s behavior went back to his days as athletic director at the University of Cincinnati, and a story broke on Thursday that supported that things weren’t right at Cincinnati. Naturally, the local and national press had a field day.
Mike Bohn’s stunning resignation returned USC back to unwanted national headlines and again put Dr. Folt under scrutiny.
(Photo above by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
The Obvious: A big question that has come forth from Friday’s resignation announcement has been whether Bohn would have resigned had not USC, Folt, and Bohn not been confronted by The Los Angeles Times over the allegations.
The Not So Obvious: Had The Times not contacted Folt and Bohn, both of whom declined comment before the actual release of the story, would USC and Folt have eventually placed Bohn in a position to resign? They say the coverup can be worse than the actual crime. You can debate that theory if you wish. Another question is why didn’t Folt address this situation and taken action earlier? The O/NSO is confident that Folt knew earlier she was probably going to give Bohn his walking papers eventually in a politically correct sort of way.
The Obvious: And finally, with all that has now gone down and perhaps more to follow as more information is released, is it possible that Dr. Carol Folt’s job at USC could be in jeopardy, as well?
The Not So Obvious: The O/NSO has heard rumblings to that effect. People in high places are not happy. They haven’t forgotten Folt’s negative handling of previous football situations with Helton. This latest national USC athletic embarrassment is difficult to stomach. In her defense, however, there are some folks in power that believed she acted quickly and appropriately when she found out the story was about to be made public.
For Dr. Carol Folt, visions of Al Pacino’s famous Godfather lines may be too real. Just when things seem to have been settled from the past, she is again pulled back into an athletic tsunami, so help me, Michael Corleone.
The post O/NSO: Michael Corleone edition appeared first on On3.
