For years, you've heard talk about the Trojan family.

Tuesday, you could see it in action.

Pat Haden came home. And he brought his nearly lifelong friend, teammate and pass-catcher, J.K. McKay with him, restoring a family name central to the USC football story in Heritage Hall.

That there's a new sheriff in USC town succeeding the almost disfunctionally shy Mike Garrett, after 17 years as USC athletics director, could not have been more clear.

Haden, even though he doesn't assume his new duties until Aug. 3, was available for more time and answered more questions from more people in one afternoon than Garrett, USC's first-ever Heisman Trophy winner, had the past decade.

"It's going to be a blast," Haden said of his new career that puts the Rhodes Scholar, private equity businessman, two-time national champion USC quarterback, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude lawyer, national football broadcaster, NFL player and 19-year member of the USC Board of Trustees, in a place he's never been.

Haden said after flatly turning down incoming USC President Max Nikias when he asked Haden if he'd consider the job six weeks ago before any decision had been made on the future of Garrett, 66.

But by last Friday, he'd reconsidered.

"I'm 57 years old," he figured. "How many times do you get a chance like this?"

So he decided he'd take that chance, even if it meant criticism at times.

"Hey, I played for the Rams," said the 6-foot Haden, who managed a seven-year NFL career with a Pro Bowl season despite his undersized frame. "I've been booed by hundreds of thousands."

Tuesday he was needled by one, best friend McKay, son of the great USC coach, John.

"He's been bossing me around since I was 14," said McKay, a lawyer who becomes associate AD overseeing the football program. "At least now I get paid for it."

The two met the first day of freshman football practice at Bishop Amat High School in La Puente. McKay said he watched Haden throw the football and immediately realized that his future would be at a new position, wide receiver.

Haden attempted to have the last word there, noting that his two wide receivers at USC were NFL Hall of Famer and All-American Lynn Swann and McKay.

"So of course," Haden said, "I threw the ball to the coach's son," adding that McKay, who would also have an NFL career with the Tampa Bay Bucs, "never caught a pass other than on a team coached by his dad."

McKay had his own return jab, noting that receivers usually try to locate the quarterbacks' eyes when they break open. "With Pat, you couldn't even see the top of his forehead when you were going over the middle. And then the ball would come out to you end-over-end. I didn't know whether to catch it or down it at the one-yard line," McKay said.

But it wasn't all fun and games. Not even close. Haden said he didn't want to do anything to disparage Garrett's 17 years of service to USC. He talked of how Garrett was the USC star who made him a Trojans fan.

"Mike had a great, great run," Haden said. "And Mike will help me in the transition."

But clearly, things are going to be different.

Two basic principles will govern USC's conduct of its athletics program: "We want to compete ferociously in all sports," Haden said. "And we want a culture of compliance."

"Every meeting will start with compliance," Haden said, noting that USC will have David Roberts, a top litigator with his own law firm, who becomes USC's vice-president for compliance, a position unlike that in any other university, heading a nine-person department

"We just have to do a better job," Haden said, even though admitting that in coming down hard on USC with its harsh sanctions, "the NCAA created a new standard for elite athletes, high-profile athletes."

The four-year probation ends "June 9, 2014," Haden said a number of times, noting he has the date circled on his calendar.

Whether the penalties come down on appeal, or just how USC structures its appeal, Haden said, is something he's not up to speed on just yet. But he knows he will be.

"It's an interesting question," he'll say when he hasn't investigated all the possibilities yet in one area. Or "come back and ask me later," when he's up to speed in another area.

But right now, he says of the NCAA: "We gotta' play by the rules . . . it's their ball."

On the subject of conflict of interest, Haden had indicated he'd resigned from both his Notre Dame broadcasting role as analyst and his USC Board of Trustees spot because that would have been a definite conflict in each area.

As to whether the NCAA had the same problem when the Infractions Committee Chair Paul Dee, former Miami athletics director, saw his old school benefit when the tough penalties were handed down and USC signee Seantreal Henderson asked out of his letter-of-intent only to select Miami, Haden took the diplomatic route.

"I didn't say that," Haden said as McKay nodded, saying, "I didn't think you were going to touch that one." But Haden did quietly say that he'd let the questioner say it.

But this he would say: "We're going to do better . . . We have to do better . . . You have to be contrite . . . We did some things wrong . . . We know that now."

As to Nikias' decision to ship Bush's Heisman Trophy back to the Heisman Trophy Trust, Haden agreed that it was the logical step to take when the NCAA required USC to disassociate itself from Bush.

But he didn't advocate wiping the USC player from anyone's memory banks.

"Reggie was fun to watch," he said. And yes, after a four-year exam, with hundreds of football players coming through the program, only one of them was found guilty of improprieties.

"That's a great way to say that," Haden said. It all came down "to one guy," he said "and that's what makes this so hard. It took just one player to bring down a program, not the other 99 percent who did everything right."

And yes, said Haden, who will assume a joint faculty position in the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism and the Marshall School of Business, "Why can't we (USC's sports program) be the best in communications?"

And what if he, as AD, becomes its communicator in chief?

"I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing," Haden said. "Pete [Carroll] was a great face for the program." But Lane Kiffin isn't Carroll, nor does he want to be. So watch Haden in that spot.

And watch Kiffin, who did have a half-dozen minor violations in his 14 months at Tennessee, keep to the NCAA straight and narrow.

As for Kiffin and the culture of compliance, "I don't think that is going to be a problem," Haden said, ticking off the names of those like himself, outgoing Pres. Steven Sample, Garrett and new president Nikias, all of whom had talked to Kiffin about compliance.