COLUMN: USC and new AD Jennifer Cohen look to be a compelling mutual fit
New Trojans athletic director Jennifer Cohen was born in Arcadia, less than 25 miles from USC's campus. Her parents are from Los Angeles, the family later moved to San Diego and that's where Cohen would return to attend college at San Diego State.
But she grew up in Washington starting in the second grade, became a fan of the Huskies early in life and spent two and a half decades working at UW, climbing her way up to the AD role there.
So while Cohen is coming home in a way, she is also leaving home, and in listening to her and USC President Carol Folt talk Monday afternoon about the process that led to this point -- to Cohen becoming the 10th athletic director in USC history and the first woman to lead the department -- the consistent theme was that the pairing was uniquely kismet for both sides.
"I told Dr. Folt that there was only one school I'd ever leave UW for, and that was USC," Cohen said. "So I've kept my eye on USC for a long time."
Said Folt: "I just think that she has it all. She's got that excitement, that dynamism. This is maybe the only job that could have ever attracted her away from a place she loves, and so I think we just had a full-on match. ...
"I think it was a dose of serendipity, but what do they say? Serendipity goes to the prepared."
RELATED: Photo gallery from Jennifer Cohen's introductory news conference | Join the discussion on our Trojan Talk board
A year ago, six months ago even, it would have seemed unbelievable that USC would be preparing to find a new athletic director.
Former AD Mike Bohn and his staff had shook up the college football world by hiring coach Lincoln Riley away from Oklahoma and later announcing the Trojans would move to the Big Ten in 2024. Riley would pay immediate dividends with an 11-win debut season last fall, and after plenty of inner turmoil under past regimes, it seemed USC athletics finally had stability.
Until suddenly it didn't, when Bohn abruptly resigned in mid-May a day after the Los Angeles Times had asked questions to Bohn and USC “about internal criticism of his management of the athletic department." The newspaper would report that the university hired a law firm earlier this year to conduct a review of the department, and that two sources with knowledge of the situation said Bohn made inappropriate comments to female colleagues “about their dress, hair and weight” that left them uncomfortable and that similar complaints had been raised about him when he was the AD at Cincinnati previously. There were also complaints about Bohn missing meetings and important events, per the Times' reporting.
Folt had never been made available for questions about Bohn's sudden and swift departure, and she deflected one Monday when TrojanSports.com asked her following the formal news conference about the ending to Bohn's tenure and how that shaped the vetting process in this subsequent three-month search for his replacement.
"I think Mike did a lot of great things for the department, and I really had wonderful opportunities to see the department grow," Folt said. "And I think even in spite of what was happening here, all of college athletics is at an inflection point -- it wasn't just our inflection [point]. ... And in some ways Mike resigning at that moment was a moment when we were needing to look and say 'Where are we going next?' And so I think we were able to use all that was going well but say, 'OK, this is a whole new world now -- how are we going to get there?'"
While Folt didn't directly address any of the controversy that stemmed from Bohn's unceremonious parting from USC, it was hard not to see it resonate in some of her comments Monday when speaking on what she prioritized in this AD search.
"We wanted a leader with great integrity beyond reproach, someone that would maintain our student-centric focus and our academic excellence, winning the right way, a fierce competitor," Folt said in her introduction of Cohen during the news conference inside USC's Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
"Through her long career working in athletics, she knows how to build and run a professional athletics operation that feels like everybody belongs -- she loves to work with her coaches and her staff while building a culture of respect and integrity, and I know that's what everyone cares about here," Folt added later.
Off to the side with a small group of reporters after the news conference, Folt further reiterated those points in calling Cohen "a culture builder."
"I liked that the students, they know she cares about them, she shows up, she's got energy, she's there and I think they really believed you don't do this in a vacuum, and they talked about her culture, her energy and her competitive spirit," Folt said. "When you do that, you know how to run a first-class department and I feel really like we are in the right place."
Cohen's name was logically connected to the job from the start, though Folt and the committee she formed to lead the search again did a notable job keeping a tight seal on all information these last three months. It wasn't until after USC announced Monday morning that it would hold a news conference in the afternoon that the national college football reporters all followed with reports of the Trojans hiring Cohen.
And, objectively, the pairing does make a heck of a lot of sense for both sides.
Cohen has a strong reputation within college athletics, has been a Power Five athletic director since 2016, sharing a conference with USC through that time and coincidentally had just helped orchestrate Washington's move to the Big Ten, which was announced earlier this month. Now, she'll take over the lead of the Trojans' Big Ten transition.
While Bohn and USC scored big in hiring Riley, leading to a remarkable seven-win improvement last season, Cohen smoothed over a rough patch of her own at Washington (where her first football hire Jimmy Lake was fired before the end of his second season due to on-field struggles and off-field tumult) by hiring Fresno State coach Kalen DeBoer, who also delivered an immediate seven-win improvement with an 11-2 finish last fall.
While much will be made of Cohen becoming the first woman to lead USC's athletic department, it won't be forefront in her mind, as she addressed in one of her most notable remarks Monday.
"I appreciate that question, I recognize the significance and really the inspiration that comes from being the first. That being said, I see myself as a leader that got this job that didn't have anything to do with my gender, really," Cohen said. "And I actually really look forward to a day where discussions around our gender aren't really top of mind."
Said Folt: "She said it very well."
Indeed, whatever perception there is about how the reports of Bohn's workplace conduct shaped the search for his replacement, Cohen is simply an obvious fit for her resume alone.
And for Cohen, this genuinely may have been the one career move she felt she had to make after seven years as Washington's AD.
"I actually told Kalen DeBoer, our football coach at Washington this morning, that I had to walk the talk. We've created a culture at UW that was all about growth and developing people and getting uncomfortable and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I just felt like it was time for me to stretch," Cohen said. "It was a great run. This is a new chapter in my life both personally and professionally, and it was the perfect fit."
But it was also a very heavy decision to walk away from the school she had started working at in 1998 on the university side before transitioning into athletics and rising to lead that department.
"It has been a very intense emotional experience, and I think that that's good. I think the decision to leave UW should hurt because it means that you cared and people cared about you," Cohen said. "That being said, I'm so excited. I am overwhelmed, honestly, by being able to run a program like USC and I just believe in the synergy that's happening on this campus to manage all the transition questions with the Big Ten. So, emotional, awesome, scary -- all the things you'd feel when you're making a big change in your life."
While she didn't claim to be a Trojans fan growing up and noted that the Huskies were her team from a young age, she talked of her appreciation for USC's stature in college athletics, the opportunities it provides to compete at the highest level in all sports, and it did seem genuine that this job in this place does hold special significance for her.
"This is where my family's roots are -- my parents, like that's something really emotional to me," Cohen said. "Both my parents are still alive, and this really hit them in a big way that I was able to lead an iconic brand and a school that we were so familiar with. I love LA, I love California. I have no idea where I'm going to live so if anybody has any ideas, let me know, but it means everything to me and it's just a real honor."
Both Cohen and Folt were coy about the timeline of their conversations, offering no details on how the process unfolded with Cohen sidestepping multiple questions about what it was like working on Washington's move to the Big Ten at the same time she was presumably already in the process of her own departure.
"I know we're not going to get into specifics here, but I can tell you when I was focused on getting Washington in the Big Ten I was 100 percent focused on getting Washington in the Big Ten," Cohen said.
Folt said only that she "did receive hundreds of resumes and recommendations -- solicited and unsolicited, thank you social media" and that the process was "very methodical and deliberate."
Meanwhile, former Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour, who was part of USC's "interim leadership team" through the search process, reiterated that Cohen was on her own short list of obvious candidates for the job.
"Honestly, when this job was open, she was absolutely -- as President Folt said, a number of names come to you all at once -- and from second one Jen was one of the ones that came to the [forefront]. I think as President Folt articulated exactly what she was looking for, Jen is the leader that USC was looking for," Barbour told TrojanSports.com.
"... This is a really unique job and I think there aren't dozens of people that could do this job. It's a small list, and then of that list there might be circumstances that you pare that list in half. So it's a small number of people."
Asked what goes into Cohen's strong reputation within college athletics, Barbour said she's known Cohen since Barbour's time as AD at Cal (from 2004-14) and has served on a couple committees with her while getting to know her well over the years.
"It's No. 1, it's her integrity. It's her commitment to college athletics and to really trying to make college athletics everything it can be for our communities, but most importantly for student-athletes. It's her commitment to student-athletes in the face of challenges sometimes, right? But it's also her expertise, it's her knowledge, it's those 30 years she talked about," Barbour said. "... That's the bedrock of where that reputation comes from. She never wavers -- she's going to do the right thing."
Cohen officially starts on the job Tuesday, and unlike her predecessor who came in at a crossroads for the football program while having to immediately evaluate the future of embattled coach Clay Helton, Cohen takes over a department where the head coaches of the most high-profile sports -- football, men's and women's basketball and baseball -- are all early into contracts or extensions while coming off successful seasons (as are several of the very successful Olympic sports programs).
Cohen will have a chance to settle in and evaluate the department, her staff and the Trojans' Big Ten transition plan.
But she will jump right into the action this Saturday as USC opens its football season against San Jose State in the Coliseum, and as she explained, fans won't have a hard time spotting her or seeing her personal investment in her new school.
"So my nickname at UW was 'Sideline Jen' because that's what one of our bloggers would always say about me because I'm fiery," Cohen said. "Our players love that. I have their back. I've never gotten a penalty, I've never been tape-recorded inappropriately so please stay away from me on the sidelines. No, I love our student-athletes, I love competition, I love to win ... You'll see my passion."