Mike Garrett Will Retire As USC Athletic Director; NBC’s Pat Haden To Take Over

Mike Garrett, the embattled longtime athletic director at the University of Southern California, will step down on August 3rd, according to a report by the L.A. Times.

Garrett has been under fire for the troubles in both the basketball and football programs, and responded in a mature fashion by accepting responsibility for the issues, and promised to resolve them as the head of the program. He spoke to USC’s sanctioning by the NCAA in the Reggie Bush scandal in particular.

As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans,” Garrett said to cheers Thursday night at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.

See? Maturity in action, a display of sober leadership that still didn’t impress the hopelessly finicky USC leadership behind the scenes who have arranged for his retirement, which will be typed as “retirement” everywhere it appears in the blogosphere because few believe he actually retired of his own volition.

His replacement will be current NBC announcer and USC alum Pat Haden, a logical choice as he has no prior experience as an athletic director and is a graduate of the school in question. Did that make sense? No? Well, good, because this is USC, a place surrounded by a miasma of confusion and poor decision-making for a while now. If Haden can keep a low-profile in his first year and keep things quiet, he’ll be considered a sort of success despite his lack of prior experience.

If Lane Kiffin’s doing it--which thus far he is--then Haden certainly can, too.