Remembering USC Ridiculously Hiring Lynn Swann as Athletic Director 4 Years Ago Today

The USC Trojans reigned in the mid-2000s as the most fearsome program in college football. Taking the baton from Larry Coker's supercharged Miami Hurricanes teams, Pete Carroll put Southern Cal back on the map and won a pile of trophies. But since winning back-to-back Rose Bowls in the 2006 and '07 seasons, nothing's been quite the same down in LA. After years of instability, the university decided to shake things up by installing one of its all-time football greats as athletic director.

On this day in 2016, USC hired Lynn Swann. And it was one of the most horrifically stupid, impulsive, calls they could've possibly made.

Long story short, Swanny spent three years on the job and USC ended up noticeably worse off than they were before thanks to two different federal bribery probes related to the athletic department.

Yes, the immediately preceding football season was beset by chaos, with head coach Steve Sarkisian taking a leave of absence just five games into the campaign before being fired for what was later revealed to be a significant problem with alcohol abuse. Something needed to change. But Lynn Swann?

Look at it this way: upon his firing, longtime LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke called the Trojans "a national embarrassment."

Along with being at the epicenter of the 2019 national college admissions bribery scandal -- Swann deputy Donna Heinel is alleged to have been paid off to the tune of more than $1 million -- there was the case of Tony Bland, a former USC basketball assistant, who pleaded guilty in January of '19 to conspiracy to commit bribery as part of the infamous NCAA corruption scheme in coordination with Christian Dawkins.

Swann was nothing more than a figurehead and lacked any real expertise in guiding the Trojans in the right direction. Plaschke is right to call his hire merely "cronyism and hero worship." Four years to the day after his appointment, the USC brand still has a long, long way to go before it's back to where it once was as the undisputed big dog of college sports.