Mike Bohn resigns as USC’s athletic director

Ryan Kartje of the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that USC athletic director Mike Bohn is stepping down from the position. In a statement to the Times, Bohn cited spending time with family and addressing health challenges as reasoning for his departure.

Arriving to USC from Cincinnati in 2019, Bohn made a seismic impact on the athletic department in just four years. Tasked with restoring USC’s football program as a national powerhouse, he was able to pull off one of the most shocking coaching hires in college football history when poaching Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma in November of 2021. The move paid immediate dividends as the Trojans came just short of reaching the College Football Playoffs in 2022 and produced a Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Caleb Williams. This has reinvigorated USC’s national profile as the team’s recruiting classes are once again ranked in the top 10 of the entire country.

Bohn’s biggest legacy at Heritage Hall ultimately will be orchestrating USC’s move with crosstown rival UCLA to the Big Ten. With uncertainty surrounding the stability of the Pac-12, Bohn worked behind the scenes to ensure the Trojans landed in the powerhouse league, making the Big Ten the first coast-to-coast conference in the country. While the move has been criticized for a variety of logistical reasons, USC is ensured to be one of the top revenue earning programs in the country with the Big Ten’s new lucrative media rights deal set to begin this year.