At least according to Aaron Torres he is! Below is a sample and here is a LINK to the article.

...it’s clear to me that above all, Haden understands what being a modern-day athletic director is about. It’s not just about sports and it’s not just about fund-raising, but also about being equal parts politician and shrewd businessman, while also acting as a full-time overseer, strict dad and friend to hundreds of athletes and coaches. In a lot of ways, being a modern college athletic director is a lot like being the “CEO of an athletic department,” and it’s a role nobody handles better than Haden.

It’s also why he’s undoubtedly better at what he does than anyone else in the business.

I couldn't agree more. Many of us wanted to see Pat come out swinging against the NCAA, but he took the long view. With Paul Dee dead, Water Polo and Tennis 4-peats, and USC Football (some say basketball too - Tex?) poised to step back onto center stage, who's getting the last laugh? We all are. Thank you Professor Haden.

From FoxSports

USC wins fifth straight Crosstown Gauntlet

LOS ANGELES -- With victories over UCLA this past weekend in women's rowing, women's track and men's tennis and higher finishes over the Bruins at the Pac-12 men's and women's golf championships, USC has secured enough points to clinch the 2011-12 version of the Crosstown Gauntlet.

It is an unprecedented fifth consecutive win for USC in the head-to-head all-sports competition with crosstown rival UCLA.

USC now has 62.5 points in the year-long competition to UCLA's 45, with only the outcome of 3 regular season baseball games May 25-27 to be decided for the 2.5 points still outstanding in the 2011-12 competition (UCLA already beat USC once in baseball earlier this season).

Official notice from USC

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that stem cell scholar Andrew McMahon will leave Harvard University to direct the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, housed within the Keck School of USC. McMahon will chair the university’s new department of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. “USC is strongly invested in moving research from bench to bedside,” McMahon said. He added that stem cell research and the institute will be a major part of USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign over the next six years. Most of the team from McMahon’s Harvard laboratory will come with him to USC, and he will also be hiring roughly 12 scientists for new positions.

UPDATE:

The recruiting tear continues. The San Diego Union-Tribne and USC are reporting that UCSD's Dean of Biological Sciences, Professor Steve Kay has been hired to become the dean of Dornsife College. Kay is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here is USC's official announcement

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that USC has hired Steve Kay, dean of the UC San Diego School of Biological Sciences, to be dean of the USC Dornsife College. USC Provost Elizabeth Garrett wrote that while at UC San Diego, Kay led a large, dynamic academic division including nearly 6,000 undergraduate biology majors, several hundred graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and faculty spanning four major departments. “As an academic leader, Dr. Kay has demonstrated a commitment to faculty excellence, recruiting exceptional new faculty members to the division including department chairs and center directors, members of the National Academy of Scientists, and many other distinguished and productive researchers,” Garrett wrote. Kay oversaw the creation of four significant new research centers at UC San Diego. The San Diego Union-Tribune mentioned the hiring in a second story.

The prosecution rests its case.

Stephanie Lazarus is charged in the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen. She was arrested in 2009 and is being held on $10 million bail.

Via LA Times

Prosecutors in the murder trial of retired Los Angeles Police Department Det. Stephanie Lazarus rested their case Friday after three weeks of testimony, including that of a former FBI criminal profiler who said the killer staged part of the crime scene in an effort to throw off investigators.

Lazarus, a 25-year veteran of the LAPD who retired after her 2009 arrest, is accused of the Feb. 24, 1986, beating and shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen, a 29-year-old nurse who married a man Lazarus had dated.

Prosecutors allege that Lazarus, 51 — who was 26 at the time of the killing and had joined the LAPD a few years earlier — was infatuated with John Ruetten, now 53, and driven to kill by the jealousy she felt over his decision to marry someone else.

Lazarus and Reutten were romantically involved when they were students at Ucla, but Reutten dumped her and married Sherri Rasmussen instead, and the jilted Lazarus just couldn't let go.

Continue reading this post »

[Bumped - seems to capture a lot of the frustration about the state of the program - DC Trojan]

Dan Weber of USCFootball.com drops a nuke on Kevin O'Neill's apologists.

LINK TO ARTICLE

They say this season doesn't matter. And that may be true. If it did, would so many of USC's basketball scholarship athletes be transfers standing around on the court in street clothes before every game unable to play?

Has a day gone by this season when someone around the USC basketball program hasn't lamented how the Trojans "lost one whole recruiting class" in the NCAA mess when Derrick Williams & Co. were released? But if that were true, how in the world does a program go out and sign players who can't come in and play right away?

What if Kentucky's John Calipari reported in to Wildcat fans that there was no way they could expect him to compete this season because his last two classes were all gone -- off to the NBA after a year each in Lexington? You think that'd fly?

Then why does it fly here? Three years is two lifetimes in the one-and-out world of college basketball these days. Williams has come and gone at Arizona. And yet a not-very-talented Wildcat team still beat USC at Galen.

Who would do what USC has done here? Who would complain about losing a class and then bring in a class that was already lost to this year? And then say you don't have any players? What sense, other than excuse-providing, does that make?

We can argue all day about KO's coaching ability, but his incompetent recruiting strategy is the elephant in the room. What if LFK had screwed things up like this, would we be so willing to write off a football season?

Enough said, read the article.

CFB fans voted with their remote controls to make this the lowest rated NC Game ever.

From CBS Sports:

The overnight ratings for the BCS National Championship Game show that last night's rematch between Alabama and LSU was the lowest-rated title game in the 14-year history of the BCS, bringing in a 13.8 overnight rating, a 14% drop from last year's game between Auburn and Oregon. The previous low had been set in 2002 when Miami played Nebraska for the title and the game brought a 14.3 rating.

And this is a surprise? The people in SEC land certainly didn't foresee a problem, but they also don't have a problem marrying their siblings.

You've got to give it to T. Boone Pickens. After watching Phil Knight's $300 Million propel his Ducks into the BCS Championship game, the gas magnate believes he is entitled to a return on his $275 Million investment in Oklahoma State Football.

"If we don't get in the BCS [title game], if I have the power to do it, I'm going to have an investigation."

"After the way we handled OU tonight, I just can't imagine LSU playing Alabama twice. It looks like an SEC-closed system if that happens."

He's throwing his weight around but I can't disagree. Alabama has only one quality win vs. Arkansas, that "quality loss" vs. LSU. They didn't even win their division. "LSU - Bama 2, Return Of The Snorefest," are you kidding me?

Bring on the Cowboys, or bring on the Feds. Yeeehaww!

Ucla Football lives in the shadow of Ucla Basketball. One picture tells the story.

That, my fellow Trojans is Ucla's practice field. Spaulding field is only 80 yards long, hence there are no 40 yard lines. The sheds on the north sideline are the football "storage buildings." Behind the storage buildings lies Pauley Pavillion, with the Ucla script on its roof. The Morgan Center football offices are to the right, behind Pauley.

Ucla is a basketball school and they can't get away from it. Pauley Pavillion dominates everything. Nearly forty years have passed since the end of the Wooden era, but the Bruins are still lost in the middle of it.

Four years ago, Ucla had a final, golden opportunity to make an investment in football, but again, basketball memories took precedence. There was talk of building a new basketball arena along the edge of campus and maybe even tearing down old Pauley to make room for a real practice field and a state of the art football facility. In the end it was shot down, because it was so important for Ucla to preserve the "Cathedral of College Hoops." Pauley Pavillion is now in the middle of an extensive reconstruction and football continues to sit in its shadow. With Morgan Center demonstrating its full 80% commitment to football, Is it any wonder their hapless players are so prone to jumping the fence?

Any coach, recruit, student or fan that sees Ucla's football facilities understands they don't hold a candle to the power, influence, and ubiquitous presence of John Robert Wooden's memory. He rests in peace; unfortunately (for Bruins) so does Ucla football.

Canzano: Pac-12 championship pairing is the 'Super Bowl' of lies

UCLA in the Pac-12 championship game is like ketchup on pancakes.

Makes no sense.

USC beat both Oregon and UCLA and it's the Trojans, not the Bruins, who should be in this game. USC is the No. 1 contender in the Pac-12, and the only conference team in the last 21 tries to beat Oregon. With UCLA included, this championship event is a sham.

I know, the Trojans have that bowl ban, but I challenge anyone to look at how this has played out and not believe it's a shame that Lane Kiffin's team won't play in the conference title game. We all deserve better than UCLA-Oregon. 

Dodd: The farce that has become the Pac-12 title game

UCLA was that Back-Up Plan because, well, you might have read somewhere that USC is ineligible for postseason play. The Trojans, Pac-12 and NCAA went into this season knowing that was the case.

What they didn’t know is that the second-place team in the South would be 6-6 UCLA, coming off a skunking by the Trojans. What they didn’t know is that UCCall it one of the unintended consequences of a postseason ban.

Surely, the NCAA infractions committee couldn’t have conceived of these circumstances when it banned USC: A team ineligible for a bowl would be replaced by a team about to be ineligible for a bowl.LA would “clinch” the South when Colorado, a team that had lost 23 straight road games, would win at Utah.

As discussed ad nauseam on this blog, the Ducks, Bruins, Stanford, and the entire Pac-12 are also victims of the NCAA's heavy-handed and unjustified penalties against USC. Now that the truth emerges all we can say is we told you so.

Down in SEC land, they're laughing their asses off at this epic cluster f&ck, the CCG is a rotten olive on top of Larry Scott's sh!t sandwich. Not only do they get to avoid playing scary Oregon, Stanford, and USC; but they get their wet dream LSU - Bama rematch and all that dirty money.

Bumped- -P

According to reports by multiple outlets, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education has notified University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere that he will be released from his job at the end of the school year. Disappointed by the news, Lariviere stated, "it comes down to a disagreement about the future of the University of Oregon."

Lariviere was hired on July 1, 2009, the same day Mike Bellotti became Athletic Director. In less than one year, he would become embroiled in controversy for approving Bellotti’s $2.3 million golden parachute for resigning in April 2010. Lariviere’s relationship with the Board of Higher Education was also strained with disagreements over school independence and increased faculty pay; though it gained him many allies among Oregon’s professors, as they scored over $5 million in raises.

In sharp contrast, Lariviere had developed a cozy partnership with Nike President and major Oregon donor Phil Knight, who upon learning of his friend’s sacking, ranted that it was “Yet another application of Oregon’s Assisted Suicide law” and that “Some people in power in our state continue to drive Oregon into a death spiral with their embrace of mediocrity.”

In a virtual declaration of war with the Board of Higher Education, Knight also stated that
“For the Chancellor and the State Board of Higher Education, a team player is someone who falls in line with their acceptance of mediocrity, and the one who strives for excellence does not fit in.” Knight said “Let us hope that the Oregon community can take this astonishingly bad decision and recognize that it does not have to define us. We still have the collective capacity to rise up and do great things.”

Continue reading this post »

Penn State administrators were informed when the Grand Jury dragged Paterno, Curley and others in to testify. Instead they allowed Sandusky to continue his relationship with the university and Paterno to act as if nothing happened.

Here is a link to the original news article in Penn Live from March 2011.

According to five people with knowledge of the case, a grand jury meeting in Harrisburg has been hearing testimony for at least 18 months about the allegation, which was made in 2009 by a 15-year-old from Clinton County.

The teen told authorities that Sandusky had inappropriate contact with him over a four-year period, starting when he was 10.

Penn State coach Joe Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley and retired university Vice President and Treasurer Gary Schultz were among those who appeared before the grand jury in January at the attorney general’s Strawberry Square office complex, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. Attempts to reach the three for comment were unsuccessful.

Penn St. must dismiss the entire football staff and release all their players at the end of the semester. Those that wish to stay until graduation should be allowed to keep their scholarships. There is no other option.

************************

Update: Here is a link to the Grand Jury's Report. Warning, graphic content.

Bumped...Woods needs to be in the discussion, Barkley too. P

How about a little Heisman talk?

Source: ESPN

Bumped...Anything can happen in the Wacky world of college football. P

We truly are not Ucla haters around here. Really. Mostly we love to lol at certain elements in their fan base, you know, those elements...

Today, Rick Neuheisel's Bruins pulled off an improbable victory over a solid team and earned a measure of respect and a share of the lead in the Pac-12 South. I attempted to post a congratulatory note on BN, but was blocked from doing so due to their suspicious nature. This will suffice.

With conference newbies Utah and Colorado on their schedule, it is highly probable that the Bruins will arrive at the Coliseum (November 26), riding a four game winning streak. At the same time, the Sun Devils will be challenged by Mighty Wazzu, Arizona and Cal. They will lose at least one of those games.

Ucla now controls its destiny, and is poised to win the Pac-12 South outright. Neuheisel will save his job, and Danny Guerrero will thumb his nose at his "Dump Dorrell" tormentors. Hail Danny!

Here is what Trojans and Bruins live for, a rivalry game that actually means something. In the mean time Bruins, try not to blow it. We'll prepare you a nice Trojan welcome to the hood in three weeks.

According to a report by Sports by Brooks

Sunday I noted the botched call by Pac-12 Referee Michael Batlan that likely cost USC an opportunity to attempt a game-winning field goal against Stanford in its eventual 56-48 triple-overtime loss to the Cardinal.

...

Trailing USC 48-41 and in possession of the ball, Stanford was called for holding during a 2nd-and-5 play from the USC 20-yard line. The foul occurred at the line of scrimmage, which should’ve resulted in a 10-yard markoff against the Cardinal forcing Stanford’s offense into a 2nd-and-15 situation at the USC 30-yard line.

Strangely though, the ball was instead walked by Umpire Rick DiBernardo only back to the USC 22-yard line, somehow setting up a 2nd-and-7 play. So rather than penalize the potent Stanford offense - led by Heisman Trophy frontrunner Andrew Luck - 10 yards, the Cardinal was pushed back only two.

How could DiBernardo have made such an astonishing error?

Maybe his mind was wandering back to his days as a starting linebacker for Notre Dame during the ’80s.

 

The Pac-12 needs an undefeated team, and a Heisman for Andrew Luck. Larry Scott made sure his representatives on the field didn't allow Lane Kiffin to mess with the plan.

Bumped - P

Dear Pat Haden,

You did it again last night, on national television. While chumming around with your NBC buddies, you trotted out that tired statement about "winning the right way." The nation nodded its approval as USC's Athletic Director again made the tacit admission that Reggie Bush tainted the entire Pete Carroll Era.

The Trojan Family has one simple request: Please stop.

Continue reading this post »

The 2011 USC Football Media Guide has arrived. It contains all the usual Trojan lore, player profiles, stats, facts and figures, plus some notable deletions.

As I read the guide I was struck by a revelation. On page 41, lumped together like some meaningless afterthought there is a group of postage stamp size pictures with names printed underneath. The title of the page is " USC'S NON-SCHOLARSHIP PLAYERS." Their anonymity is so striking that for all we know, these people might be some theater company or a comedy troupe that was inserted in the football book by mistake.

I have three words for USC: GET A CLUE

Continue reading this post »

Bumped - P

Perhaps Paul Dee meant his unprecedented attack on USC to serve as a distraction, and it seemed to work well for a while. Well, well... Apparently The U's chickens are coming home to roost right under the Fat Man's nose in the form of a new benefits scandal.

From InsideTheU:

Multiple sources confirmed to InsideTheU Sunday that the NCAA is looking into comments made by former UM booster Nevin Shapiro regarding his involvement in NCAA violations.

The NCAA will be meeting with “a number” of people Monday to try to gain more knowledge of the situation and a possible wrongdoing.

Shapiro, who contributed $150,000 to the UM athletic program, pled guilty in June for running a $930 million Ponzi scheme and was given a 20-year sentence. He stated in April 2010 that he plans on writing a “tell-all book” about his involvement with former UM players.

His involvement with UM dates back to 2001 during the Larry Coker and Randy Shannon-coached teams.

"Larry Coker was blissfully ignorant (to Shapiro) and Randy Shannon hated that guy and didn't want anything to do with him," one source said.

During his time around the program, many players were suspicious of Shapiro.

“Obviously with a guy like that driving around, pulling up in an Escalade or a Range Rover, you ask questions, ‘who is it’. ‘Oh he’s a booster’. ‘What does he do?’ ‘I don’t really know, I think he’s a jeweler or something’,” one former player told InsideTheU. “You would get a different story every time.”

The player continued: “Nobody ever knew what he did. We heard he was in imports or exports. But we heard he had like 15 different jobs. We never got a straight answer.”

Well knock me over with a feather! Nah, it couldn't be, could it? Illicit money changing hands under the watchful eye of that (excuse the term) paragon of integrity Professor Paul Dee of the University of Miami?

Continue reading this post »

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been home to USC football since 1923. USC was the Coliseum's original tenant and the construction of the building was based on that agreement, and without USC the Coliseum may not have existed.

With the recent announcement of the construction of a new venue for NFL football in Los Angeles, the hack politicos that have overseen the deterioration and ransacking of the Coliseum have awoken to the smell of NFL money. But, thanks to its customary laziness, mismanagement and mendacity, the Coliseum Commission finds itself in default because it has failed to repair and upgrade the building per the terms of the Master Lease with USC. The University now holds the cards and has the right to demand full control of the Coliseum.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Coliseum is home to USC football and the school's lease gives the Trojans veto power over the NFL returning to the stadium...

If the NFL returns to Los Angeles, they would like to move a team into the Coliseum for three or four years while a new facility is built next door to the Staples Center. This makes nattering hacks like David Israel and Bernard Parks wonder what's in it for them.

City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, whose district includes the Coliseum, said that a USC administrator told him that the school intends to exercise the veto unless it receives a new "master lease" that would give the private university near-total control of the publicly owned stadium.

Parks, who also sits on the Coliseum's governing commission, said he would oppose such a lease, believing that it would allow USC to keep other events out of the stadium, such as soccer games, Fourth of July celebrations and even a third Olympic Games. "I do not believe that I could realistically turn over a public facility to a private institution," he said.

Most disgustingly, Israel found a way to equate the $1.8 Million conflict of interest scandal enveloping the Coliseum Commission and the Electric Daisy rave organizers with Reggie Bush's family getting free rent in San Diego.

Lately, the commission has been caught up in a widening conflict-of-interest scandal centered on reports that two firms set up by a former manager collected at least $1.8 million from companies that did business with the Coliseum and Sports Arena. Now the subject of criminal investigations, the alleged diversion of funds occurred even as the commission fell into the red and failed to make improvements to the stadium required under the USC lease.

USC administrators have privately pointed to the financial scandal as evidence the nine-member Coliseum Commission has been a poor caretaker and that the university would do a better job.

Israel conceded that oversight mistakes make the commission a fair target for criticism. But he contended that the stiff NCAA sanctions imposed last year on USC — resulting from a finding that the school lacked "institutional control" over its athletics program — show that the university's management has had similar problems.

"There is plenty of blame to go around," Israel said.

David Israel's comments are blatantly false, offensive, and extremely counterproductive. This level of hyperbole reveals the heart of a desperate man, and one that is willing to say anything for one last power grab. Here's some news for Mr. Israel, the NCAA does not put people in jail, but the Los Angeles District Attorney most certainly does.

It's time for USC to lawyer up and bring an end to the era of misery and mismanagement that have been wrought by David Israel and his cohorts. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, our home for 88 years deserves much better.

Bumped - This has been brewing behind the scenes for a while...P

The "Plantation System" the NCAA is running in College Football is a topic we have discussed extensively on CC. Now, the greatest Athletic Director in America has taken up the cause of the starving athlete that has to survive on dollar meals. The NCAA and many of it's member institutions are happy with the system and more than willing to continue in this mode. It is absolutely disgusting.

From the Rips It Blog:

As he nears his one-year anniversary as USC's athletic director, Pat Haden wants to address what he feels is an injustice with the formula the NCAA uses to determine scholarship stipends for student-athletes.

"The NCAA formulas used to determine student-athlete stipends are not appropriate," Haden said.  "Having interviewed 15 different athletes and broken down their stipend against their bills, they are left with about $5 per day for food.  I just do not think that is right."

The current formula does not take into account the different costs associated with going to USC and living in Los Angeles as opposed to Washington State and a small town like Pullman.

"I would change the formula," said Haden.  "If you used the 'cost-of-attendance' formula, I am told USC student-athletes would get about $3,300 more per year.  Of course, it would go on the athletic department's budget.  We can afford to do this, while some of the others cannot."

And of course, USC cannot make unilateral changes nor can the Pac-12 amend the rule for the conference. 

"The NCAA has to do it.  It is pushing the proverbial rock up the hill because some of the institutions cannot afford to do it."

Nevertheless, the USC athletic director will continue to push for reform in the hopes of improving the health and wellness of the student-athletes.

"In a year from now, our new TV contract is going to kick in with $20 million per year in revenue and it is not right to have a student-athlete tell me he or she is going hungry," said an impassioned Haden.  "It is unconscionable."

Sue the NCAA for trophies and bowl games? Balderdash! Take this up with the courts and the monster's back will finally be broken.

Fight On Pat Haden!

Bumped - P

What’s important is not what’s being done in the open with the hand you can see, look at what the other one is doing.

On the eve of slamming USC with unprecedented penalties, the NCAA President Mark Emmert put on a dog and pony show called the "Enforcement Experience" for the press to see the inner workings of an "Infractions Committee." Incomprehensibly, most of the reporters in attendance fell for the ruse.

By the end of the Paul Hackett era, USC football had suffered record losing streaks against Notre Dame and Ucla. Hackett won only 19 games while losing 18 in three seasons. USC's rivals loved it. The press loved it. America loved it and Bill Plaschke declared that Los Angeles was a "Bruin football town." Downtrodden, USC hadn't won a National Championship since 1978, and elite coaches turned their noses up and preferred backwater places like Eugene and Corvallis, Oregon.

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