USC hires Washington’s Jennifer Cohen to be its new athletic director
Only one job could convince Jennifer Cohen to leave the school that made her fall in love with college athletics. USC was it.
After eight years as Washington’s athletic director, Cohen was announced as USC’s 10th athletic director on Monday, making the 54-year-old the first woman to hold the position at the school. Cohen will take over an unstable USC athletic department that has been without a leader for three months since former athletic director Mike Bohn abruptly stepped down amid criticisms over mismanagement and misconduct allegations.
The Arcadia native will guide the Trojans into the Big Ten, where they will begin competition in 2024, and steer the department through uncertain times in college athletics, where name, image and likeness legislation changes daily, major conferences are shifting and players are enjoying more freedom than ever through the transfer portal.
Jennifer Cohen’s success as USC athletic director will mostly hinge on working with Lincoln Riley to ensure USC becomes a college football juggernaut.
“Leading USC athletics is not just an opportunity of a lifetime,” Cohen said as part of a prepared statement. “It is a responsibility of a lifetime.”
Cohen addressed a room full of reporters and athletic department officials. Men’s basketball coach Andy Enfield sat in the third row. Women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb stood near the back. Football coach Lincoln Riley, whose season kicks off Saturday at the Coliseum, was not seen in the room, although Cohen said she spoke to him Monday morning.
Getting an athletic director in place before the first football game was a goal for the search committee, USC president Carol Folt said. Folt received hundreds of resumes, she said, vetting candidates and an advisory board and guidance from Parker Executive Search. They were searching for a candidate with a proven track record at a Power 5 school and a “leader that has a strategic vision ... to help USC athletics through this historic time,” Folt said in her prepared statement.
“She shares a vision and values, she has that experience and drive, she’s very tenacious, you’ll see, to position an already thriving athletics department for success,” Folt added.
“USC is one of a very small number of places that can realistically aspire to have it all,” said Sandy Barbour, a former athletic director at California and Penn State who was on USC’s interim leadership team. “I think that in Jennifer Cohen, you have got somebody that is going to squeeze every last drop out of getting to ‘all’ of the all.”
Cohen will report to Heritage Hall on Tuesday after arriving in L.A. on Saturday amid Hurricane Hilary. Immediately, she needed to run to Nordstrom in search of a jacket in the perfect shade of red. For much of her life, that color had been off-limits.
Cohen, who was born in Arcadia but moved to Tacoma, Wash., from San Diego in second grade, spent the last 24 years at Washington. She grew up going to UW football games and wrote letters to former coach Don James professing her love for the Huskies. They were “definitely my hometown team,” she said.
But when the USC job opened in May, Cohen perked up from afar. While she didn’t have romantic childhood memories of games at the Coliseum the way she looked at Husky Stadium, she still remembered the USC brand as a dominant force in college athletics. She knew the tradition, resources and institutional alignment at the school made winning at the highest level possible.
Cohen was also facing a new chapter in her personal life. She moved her youngest son, Dylan, a freshman offensive lineman at Montana, into college this summer. She was facing life as an empty-nester.
She told UW football coach Kalen DeBoer, whom she hired last year and went 11-2 in his first season, about her new professional chapter Monday morning.
“I had to walk the talk,” Cohen said of her talk with DeBoer, her most successful major head coaching hire. “We’ve created the culture at UW that was all about growth and the development of people and getting uncomfortable and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I just felt like it was time for me to stretch. It was a great run.”
After leading fundraising at UW, where she raised $50 million for the renovation of Husky Stadium that was completed in 2013, Cohen took over as athletic director in 2016. She negotiated the school’s 10-year, $190 million apparel contract with Adidas in 2019 and steered the Huskies to join USC, UCLA and Oregon in the Big Ten starting in the fall of 2024. Washington and Oregon will reportedly make about half a share of the conference’s media rights distribution, while the Trojans and Bruins will make full shares from the start.
USC president Carol Folt still refuses to take accountability for the botched hiring of athletic director Mike Bohn following his resignation in May.
Two weeks ago, Cohen announced UW’s move to the Big Ten, saying the new conference would best position UW for future success. When USC and UCLA shocked college athletics in 2022 by announcing they would leave the Pac-12, Cohen issued a statement with UW president Ana Marie Cauce saying they were “disappointed” in the decision.
A year later when she reports for her first day at a new job, one of her first tasks will be asking about USC’s transition to the Big Ten.
Go beyond the scoreboard
Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
