USC Hiring Lynn Swann As Athletic Director Is Most USC Thing Ever

Lynn Swann was announced as the new athletic director at USC on Wednesday in what might be the most USC move ever.

I’m a fan of Swann, he’s a great guy, a pro football Hall of Famer, a dedicated member of the “Trojan Family,” was an excellent broadcaster, and has an engaging, affable personality. He also has zero experience as a collegiate athletic director. So basically his resume is eerily similar to outgoing athletic director Pat Haden.

In recent months, USC has been roundly criticized for its insular hiring practices. The school is viewed as tending to hire people in key positions who “get USC” as opposed to the most qualified candidates. That mentality has led to following the Pete Carroll era with guys like Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Clay Helton. Now maybe Helton breaks out of that post-Carroll rut, but his hire didn’t inspire confidence. Swann will be the third consecutive USC athletic director to have been a football star at the school.

To be fair, at a school like USC, the athletic director’s main jobs are glad-handing and fundraising. The support staff underneath him does all the real nuts and bolts work of administrating the department. But it helps if the guy on top of that pyramid isn’t learning on the job.

Swann could wind up being a home run hire, but from the outside looking in, it appears USC is just doing more of what USC tends to do.

Swann isn’t just a former jock though, the guy has serious accomplishments outside of sports. He ran for governor of Pennsylvania as a republican in 2006, earning 40 percent of the vote off of popular incumbent democrat Ed Rendell. He was director on the boards of H J Heinz Co., Hershey Entertainment and Resorts and Wyndham International. In 2002 he was appointed the Chairman of the United States President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports by George W. Bush. He retired from that post in 2005. So he has real world experience, just not the kind of experience you would expect from an athletic director at a major institution.

Swann is a 64-year-old with experience in the world. I’m just not sure he was on top of anyone’s list as a potential great athletic director. Maybe he’ll prove me wrong, but this just seems like another insular hire from USC.