USC's expansion of its recruiting and creative staff continued Wednesday as the Trojans hired away two key video staffers from LSU who helped capture the Tigers' road to the national championship last season.
The Athletic's Bruce Feldman and Antonio Morales first reported the news that USC has hired director of football video production Jacob Brown and assistant director of football video production Will Stout. USC then made its own announcement.
Stout later made his own announcement on Twitter as well.
ESPN featured Stout in a story this fall titled "Meet the team behind college football's best hype videos". He and Brown, who worked on LSU's internal video team producing content for the team's use rather than the external social media efforts, will work on producing similar hype videos for USC as well as contribute to the program's digital recruiting efforts.
Because of the ongoing pandemic, their start dates have been pushed back to June 1, according to a source.
USC athletic director Mike Bohn and senior associate AD Brandon Sosna put a plan in motion soon after the end of last season to expand USC's recruiting/creative department from five full-time staffers to 11.
But because of the hiring freeze brought on by this pandemic, only three new hires formally went through previously -- that being new director of graphic design Alex Verdugo, director of high school relations Armond Hawkins Jr. and assistant director of player personnel Drew Fox (promoted from graduate assistant) -- and then another spot opened last month when graphic designer Ryan Miller left, leaving Verdugo as the lone full-time graphic designer.
Ultimately, the Trojans' master plan included adding a director of football marketing and branding, director of football-specific video production, an assistant director of football video production and another graphic designer. These latest hires fulfill the two video positions.
It's not likely the other spots will be filled soon as USC continues to navigate the pandemic and hiring freeze.
As for the video production component, has had a director of video production -- Rich Rodriguez -- who works for the athletic department as a whole. The Trojans have not had a football-specific video staff for projects like this until now. Brown and Stout will eventually report to the new director of football marketing, who reports to director of player personnel Spencer Harris.
Harris and Sosna set their sights on the Brown and Stout as their top targets for those video positions and were able to sell them on the overall vision of the program and being able to create something new that hasn't existed here.
"What you see on social media right now is just the beginning of what it's going to be. We're going to do some really cool stuff once it's going," Harris told TrojanSports.com last month.
