Meet Mike Bohn, the man tasked with resurrecting USC football with one perfect hire
Six hundred and fifty-one days of unrest and uncertainty dragged on as Mike Bohn awaited this September morning. During the worst of the pandemic, when the seclusion weighed most on his soul, Bohn longed for the simplicity of the scene that now unfurled before him. USC's athletic director stood amid a sea of cardinal and gold buzzing with life. Classic rock pouring out from tailgate tents. Fans flooding the Coliseum's south lawn, toasting their reunions with red Solo cups.
Those reunions couldn't have come soon enough. Bohn, by his own admission, was ill-suited for isolation. The blustery passion that had come to define his climb through college athletics was not meant to be confined to Zoom calls. The distance left him drained, disconnected from the very department he was tasked with rebuilding. "We're supposed to be in the people business," he lamented in September 2020. So how exactly, Bohn wondered, was someone expected to restore faith in the Trojans while working remotely?
After a grueling year, Bohn stood in the shadow of the Coliseum on the first Saturday of the 2021 season. He'd spent nearly 90% of his USC tenure operating at a distance. Brandon Sosna, his chief of staff, had done the math. "It's depressing just to hear that," Bohn said.
It was a difficult time to be an athletic director, juggling health mandates, testing protocols and other issues beyond his job description. But this part — the selfies and the fist bumps — had always come naturally. Each interaction seemed to energize Bohn. Every few steps, he was compelled again to stop, introducing himself to anyone offering even the briefest glint of eye contact.
"Hi, my name is Mike Bohn," he said. "I'm the new athletic director."
Never mind that it'd been nearly two years since Bohn took over at USC — not all that much longer than Lynn Swann, the previous athletic director, served in the post. Bohn spent much of that time cleaning up messes his predecessors left behind, rebuilding a department not only rocked by scandal but plagued by a decade of insularity and stagnation.
He'd made major strides considering the circumstances. But at the start of a new season, he couldn't shake the feeling he hadn't accomplished enough. He still hadn't quite settled into his role.
"Clearly," Bohn said, "we have a lot of work to do here still."
The most pressing work had yet to begin. Nine days later, Bohn fired Clay Helton two games into his seventh season, cutting the cord on a football coach Bohn twice elected to retain despite consistent public outcry for his ouster.
Many wondered why he waited so long. Had Bohn fired Helton in 2019, when he first weighed the coach's future, he might've instantly endeared himself
