USC athletic director Mike Bohn has a history of punching first in realignment fights

It was possibly the most unsure stretch in the history of faculty athletics. Chaos reigned amid rumors of realignment. A blue-blood application was threatening to abandon its conference above Tv set cash. One more meeting commissioner was openly courting that blue blood with the intent of making a tremendous conference. At any instant it seemed one domino could tumble, irreparably altering the landscape.

The unrest remaining Mike Bohn in a precarious place. As Colorado’s athletic director in June 2010, at the height of conference realignment drama, Bohn was wary of where by the Big 12 was headed. Texas, decided to start its own community, was flirting with the likelihood of leaving for the Pac-12. The Pac-12 was flirting back again. Rumors flew about Oklahoma, Oklahoma Point out, Texas A&M and Texas Tech bolting along with the Longhorns, a go that would assuredly mark the conclude of the meeting.

“Had the Big 12 fallen aside, Colorado would’ve been screwed,” suggests Chuck Neinas, Bohn’s mentor and a previous interim commissioner with the Major 12. “They would’ve been in the Mountain West.”

Bohn did not want to chance Colorado currently being left driving. So he manufactured the 1st go, spearheading efforts for Colorado to be part of what would quickly turn out to be the Pac-12. A single of his contingencies? That the convention guarantee Colorado was in the exact division as USC and UCLA, which Bohn realized had a severe arrive at in his condition.

At the time, then-Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott thanked Colorado for its “courage” in taking the to start with action in what seemed then would be a lengthy realignment saga. But Texas in the end resolved to stand pat, with the conference introducing only Colorado and Utah.

Twelve decades later, with the conference nonetheless reeling from Scott’s incapability to land Texas, Bohn would yet again choose a daring 1st step, this time aiding guide USC along with UCLA out of the Pac-12, where by they experienced been flagship users for extra than a century, and into the Massive 10, where by a windfall of new media legal rights revenue awaits.

Apart from this time, as USC’s athletic director, the go could have major implications across all of faculty athletics. Individuals existential problems start with the possible demise of the Pac-12 as a Electric power 5 convention as the Massive Ten and SEC emerge as a formidable “Power Two.”

USC athletic director Mike Bohn at the Coliseum on Nov. 13, 2020.

(Wally Skalij / VFAB)

Not that the Pac-12 was in an great area right before the exit by USC and UCLA.

“They ended up anxious about the Pac-12, the television marketplace,” Neinas claimed. “It just can't assess to what they are likely to get as a final result of likely to the Massive 10. It is one particular matter if it was a number of bucks additional, but two, a few periods additional, you just cannot pass that up.”

The prospect of adding the nation’s second-greatest market to the Massive Ten was sure to command awareness of tv networks.

“I consider that Fox was probably the matchmaker in this,” Neinas mentioned of the television community. “This of course serves to make improvements to their expense, so to converse, because USC and UCLA and the Los Angeles market provide a large amount of value to the Big 10 offer. I know that it’s complicated for both institutions to leave their lengthy-established historical past in the Pac-12, but unfortunately, let’s confront it, tv is dictating what’s occurring in college athletics.”

Bohn assured that the transfer was “about way a lot more than means,” but he saw the handwriting on the wall when Texas and Oklahoma declared previous summer months that they were leaving the Major 12 — for true, this time — for the Southeastern Convention.

“I really don't consider there is a college or university administrator in the state that did not figure out that plainly there had been two conferences that ended up separating them selves from everybody else,” Bohn instructed The Occasions. “That individual transfer further emphasised that.”

USC leaders worked to secure a seat at the table, the place they could aid dictate where by realignment heads from in this article.

In past stops, Bohn didn’t always have that luxurious.

When Bohn was the athletic director at Idaho and the Significant West stopped actively playing football in 2000, he hoped to usher his university into the Western Athletic Meeting. But the Vandals have been handed up and remaining to sign up for the significantly-flung Solar Belt. A several years later on, Bohn still left.

At Cincinnati, Bohn was also at the time rebuffed in realignment talks. The Bearcats were seen as a best prospect to be a part of the Huge 12 in 2016, till the conference voted not to increase.

Rejected by the meeting he the moment still left, Bohn and his chief of employees, Brandon Sosna, reset their strategies for about 6 a long time down the line, when they considered significant realignment was inevitable amid an inflow of new media legal rights offers.

Cincinnati would in the long run defeat that timeline, accepting an invite to the Huge 12 final September.

By then, Bohn was off to USC, where by, for the fourth time, he would assistance usher a school from a single meeting to another.