After choosing not to renew head strength and conditioning coach Aaron Ausmus' contract earlier this month, USC has formally filled the position, announcing the hiring of Robert Stiner on Saturday.
Stiner, who will have the title of director of football sports performance, spent the past three seasons as the assistant director of football strength and conditioning at Notre Dame.
He spent 2017 as the assistant director of football performance at Cincinnati, where USC athletic director Mike Bohn was in charge of the athletic department at the time.
"We are very excited to welcome coach Stiner to the Trojan Family," USC football coach Clay Helton said in a statement. "His knowledge and passion for developing student-athletes to reach their full potential is well recognized by his peers and has made him a highly-respected coach in the field. The system he brings has helped produce teams that compete and thrive at the highest level of college football and we are confident he will make an immediate impact on our program and student-athletes."
Stiner, 35, replaces Ausmus, who was hired in March of 2019 in his second stint leading the strength program and received strong early reviews from USC players and Helton. It's not clear what led to USC's decision to move on from him so quickly.
As for Stiner, a former college football defensive end at Belhaven, he also spent the 2012-13 seasons as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Mississippi State, 2014-16 as the director of strength and conditioning at Central Arkansas and 2016 in an assistant role at Florida International.
His work at Cincinnati would have made Bohn familiar with him, but his time at Notre Dame is what stands out from his resume. There has been a lot of praise for Fighting Irish director of football performance Matt Balis and his staff, which included Stiner, in leading the resurgence of that program in recent years. Here's some interesting perspective on how that's impacted the recent performance of Notre Dame players at the NFL Scouting Combine.
USC still needs to hire an offensive line coach to complete its offseason staff changes.
