AD Pat Haden has shown he can do it all – except bring success to USC

For college football fans and insiders of a certain age – say, 40s and older – the name “Pat Haden” conjures respect verging on awe. He darn near comes with a halo attached.

Star player. Star student. Prominent broadcaster. Successful lawyer. Savvy businessman. Permanently youthful. Perpetually distinguished. Talk to people of that certain age and you will come away convinced that there’s not a thing he can’t do better than 99 percent of the populace.

Except maybe run a major athletic department.

One of the game’s all-time golden boys has had a five-year tenure as athletic director at his alma mater, USC, that has left a few dents on the old halo. Haden is one of those guys who is regularly referred to as “dignified” – yet USC athletics has staggered through one indignity after another during Haden’s time in charge.

The indignities aren’t necessarily his doing – but some of them have come from a guy Haden personally hired to put a better face on the program than his predecessor. For a classy guy, Haden has been bogged down by dealing with a lot of low-class stuff.

The most recent example, of course, was football coach Steve Sarkisian slurring and swearing his way through USC’s annual “Salute to Troy” event. Sarkisian’s behavior was embarrassing enough that Haden reportedly had to personally usher him off stage at the booster gathering. Sarkisian apologized thereafter, citing mixing an undisclosed medication with a moderate amount of alcohol.

Sarkisian said he does not believe he has a drinking problem, but is seeking treatment anyway. However, that treatment apparently will not take him away from his long-hour, high-stress job – which seems a bit antithetical, really. But strange is the new normal at USC.

Sarkisian’s job comes with added pressure this season because the semi-loaded Trojans were the Pac-12 media pick to win the conference – something they haven’t done since the Pete Carroll days. In six seasons as a head coach – five at Washington and one at USC – Sarkisian has never lost fewer than four games. Despite that good-but-unspectacular record, he was Haden’s personal pick to lead the Trojans.

Thus, even in just his second season, it’s time for Sarkisian to show something he hasn’t previously shown.

“We all chose to come to USC to win,” Sarkisian acknowledged at Pac-12 media day a month ago. “I didn't come here to be OK or come here to be mediocre. We came here to win championships. At some point those expectations are going to be what they were. How quickly that occurred, we don't know. Will it occur this year? We don't know. We have to go play.

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“But if the expectations were going to be too big, this wasn't going to be the place for you. I think we do a good job of expressing that in recruiting. We do a good job of expressing that when we're hiring assistant coaches. I think Pat did an amazing job of expressing that to me when it came to the hiring process for me. When you come to USC, the expectations are what they are. ... Ultimately we have to go perform.”

Performing like a lout at the booster function isn’t really what Haden had in mind for Sarkisian.

But that was only the latest embarrassing moment for Haden to handle. During the game last season against Stanford, after a controversial series of calls – including an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Sarkisian – the head coach had a staffer text his boss in the press box to come down to the sideline. Haden did so, showing up and yelling at the officials – something that earned him a fine and reprimand from the Pac-12 office. It was a bizarre, wait-till-my-dad-gets-here antic by Sarkisian, and equally bizarre by Haden to insert himself into the game.

Of course, that came just a couple of weeks after USC defensive back Josh Shaw created a fanciful story that ultimately backfired. Shaw said he sprained both ankles after leaping to save a nephew from drowning – a tale that led to some fervent PR from the school and lavish praise in the media. Unfortunately, it wasn’t true – Shaw instead injured himself jumping from a balcony to avoid police who had been called to his girlfriend’s apartment after an alleged disturbance. Shaw was suspended last season as a result.

And all of this came after Haden thought he had shut down the circus by firing his resident clown coach, Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin was hired by USC’s previous athletic director, Mike Garrett, whose tone deafness and arrogant combativeness during a long NCAA investigation may have escalated the penalties assessed to USC football. Haden inherited Kiffin and kept him several months too long before suddenly firing him five games into the 2013 season – on the tarmac at LAX early one Sunday morning after returning from an embarrassing loss at Arizona State.

The Kiffin hire was on Garrett. The length of Kiffin’s tenure and weird method of his ouster were on Haden.

But it wasn’t the first time Haden found himself wacking a coach mid-year after some forehead-slapping stuff. Previously, Haden kept basketball coach Kevin O’Neill even after suspending him during the 2011 Pac-12 tournament for an altercation with a prominent Arizona booster. O’Neill kept the job until the middle of the 2012-13 season, when he was abruptly fired.

O’Neill had a lousy record at USC. The successor Haden hired, Andy Enfield, has been worse – he’s 23-41 overall and 5-31 in Pac-12 games. Enfield was left a threadbare roster, but signs of progress have been hard to find so far.

So Pat Haden has had a lot of stuff happen after riding in on a white horse (Traveler?) to save his alma mater. There have been more gaffes than glory in the revenue sports.

The 62-year-old Haden has one season left as a member of the College Football Playoff committee, and according to reports he hasn’t committed to remaining as AD beyond this year. His name still carries nostalgic cache and garners respect – but in terms of what he’s done for USC lately, the answer is damage control. And the school should be expecting more than that from its golden boy athletic ambassador.

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