At USC, Pat Haden has run out of second chances to make a first impression

Whenever it comes to light in our modern mass-media age that the head football coach at a major program:

A) is drunk;

B) is not reporting to practice;

and

C) needs substantial therapeutic and rehabilitative care…

… it’s big news. It should be.

Moreover, one can’t avoid the tsunami of reports on the subject, even if the larger theater of events might represent a little bit of overkill. The story is there and can’t be wished away.

Yes, the primary concern in such a situation — a hypothetical which has burst into a very sad reality at the University of Southern California — is for the head coach in question to receive the care he so urgently needs. Yes, the rest can be sorted out in due time.

However, as much as that focus on Steve Sarkisian’s health should take precedence, no one can deny that a large chunk of the reaction to Sunday’s news in Los Angeles flowed to the kinds of questions which simply can’t — and won’t — be withheld in any such circumstance.

The main question: “Who will be the next coach at USC?”

Other football questions surely entered the minds of many: “How will USC prepare for Notre Dame this Saturday? How will this affect the larger recruiting process and the status of specific recruits? How will the coaching staff be re-organized to deal with this situation?” You get the point.

The inclination to ask football questions and seek football-related news can seem to be nothing other than a profound lack of sensitivity to Sarkisian’s condition, which deserves only empathy, prayer, and an earnest wish for complete recovery, without care for anything related to football. Yet, given the high profile of USC in a major media market (L.A.) and in the college football ecosystem, how will football questions be locked out of this discussion? It’s as workable and realistic as herding 1,000 cats into a barn on your sprawling farm.

What we’ve tried to do here at TSS is to establish an order of priority in responding to the Sarkisian story. Yesterday, in our first reaction, we established that Steve Sarkisian’s health is and must be issue number one.  That can’t be stated any more straightforwardly. If you’re just catching wind of this story or are new to our site (or both), it’s quite understandable for you to think we’re zooming into the football aspects of this situation without first valuing Sarkisian as a person.

Simply know that the above link — to a story written on Sunday afternoon — represents our up-front attempt to address this matter with an appropriate sense of priority.

Having established this, let’s move to the next component of this larger story at USC.

*

After our initial reaction above to the Sark news, more reports and context emerged from USC reporters and beat writers, including Scott Wolf of the Los Angeles Daily News. It is true that Mr. Wolf’s work has long polarized portions of his readership. That relatively general statement is not a verdict on his work; it’s merely worth noting that Mr. Wolf’s reportage is and has been a rather constant point of contention with many USC fans. What he tweets should not be taken as gospel, nor should it be reflexively distrusted. It’s worth sharing with you, though, because it’s clear that people inside the USC football program or athletic department (or both) feel emboldened in the middle of this power vacuum to embarrass one or both entities.

These were the most explosive leak-reports from Mr. Wolf’s Twitter feed on Sunday afternoon:

There’s no need to lightly tiptoe around the matter: If any appreciable portion of these reports is in fact true, the person in the center of the spotlight — who has already been placed on leave and whose health is already a concern — ceases to become the primary point of focus.

Steve Sarkisian will never again stand on the sidelines as USC’s head football coach — that seems relatively clear at this point. The person who must account for himself if any portion of Scott Wolf’s reports are true is athletic director Pat Haden.

If Sarkisian was the story on Sunday afternoon, Haden became the story Sunday night, and demands our attention today.

*

Very simply, Haden allowed Sarkisian to continue coaching despite that drunken episode at a donor event in August. Haden has clearly and firmly tethered his reputation to Sarkisian’s tenure. Anything which points to enabling — no matter how innocent or well-intentioned — would seem to put Haden in an impossible political position, destroying what’s left of his credibility at a time when USC is trying to renovate its home football stadium, the venerable Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Haden doesn’t just need the confidence and trust of boosters and other important people throughout the university for football reasons; he needs those wells of confidence and trust because a lot of resources are going to be devoted to USC athletics in the coming years.

It’s one thing for Sark to have problems with his demons in private or other relatively contained settings. Plane flights and game nights in the presence of the collegiate athletes he either recruited or inherited (from Lane Kiffin) do not represent private contexts.

You can easily connect the dots as far as Pat Haden is concerned: If he didn’t know a lot of these things happen, why was he so out of the loop? He looks bad in that case.

If Haden DID know, why didn’t he get Sarkisian into an aggressive treatment plan and shut down his coaching career so that he could get his life back? Haden looks even worse if he did know, but either way, he’s diminished to the point of no return. It’s just about impossible to imagine a scenario in which he stays on as athletic director.

*

Yes, we’re talking politics. Yes, we’re discussing issues that affect the business of college sports at USC. This isn’t insensitive to Steve Sarkisian; it’s merely a reflection of an evolving situation, one in which — if various reports are indeed true — Pat Haden has just dug himself into a ditch at USC from which he’ll never escape…

… not with his job intact, at least.