USC AD Mike Bohn on going against fan sentiment in first big decision

Sitting up in his office less than an hour after USC announced Clay Helton would remain as head football coach, athletic director Mike Bohn addressed the fan backlash to the move before he was even asked about it.

"I am keenly aware of some dissatisfaction with our base and I respect that," he said in an interview with TrojanSports.com and two other outlets. "But it is really going to be imperative and important for us to support our student-athletes and help us and pull that together. That may obviously take some time to do that, but that’s what we’re going to work hard on."

His tweet announcing the decision garnered more than 2,000 replies in the first two hours -- most of them, well, not supportive.

Fan sentiment has largely been against Helton since the unraveling of USC's 5-7 finish last season, and the critics have only become louder and more dug in this fall, even with the Trojans winning five of their final six games to go 8-4 overall and 7-2 in the Pac-12 and reach No. 22 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

What fans saw was a 3-3 start that again took the team out of national contention early, a blowout 56-24 loss at home to Oregon last month that knocked the Trojans from atop the Pac-12 South standings and a program ranked No. 70 nationally in recruiting.

The fan base spent the fall pining for the likes of Urban Meyer, the retired former Ohio State and Florida coach, but really pining for change in general.

Bohn says he didn't talk to any other candidates for the position, however.

"No. No, I did not. The process was a thorough review of all of our options and potential scenarios, but no," he said.

And he didn't elaborate on why, if he wasn't talking to other candidates, it took 11 days from the regular-season finale and four days from when Utah officially clinched the Pac-12 South to make the decision to keep the coach he already had.

"It's really irrelevant, associated with revealing that. I just will tell you after being in the business 40 years, to include when I was a student-athlete, having extensive relationships with people around the country and understanding the best and finest college football and football minds in America and having access to that was helpful," he said.

But surely he heard the fans too -- he acknowledged as much. They were loud, they were relentless and the critics held the vocal majority. On social media, on message boards, anywhere that USC football was a topic of discussion.