For obvious reasons, a power school showed interest in hiring TCU’s athletic director

USC’s search for a new athletic director included a hard look at the guy in Fort Worth, who is not going to follow Lincoln Riley to L.A..

Sources said that TCU director of athletics Jeremiah Donati has withdrawn his name for consideration as the next athletic director at USC.

Donati was unavailable for comment.

After arguably the most successful 12-month stretch in the history of TCU’s athletic department, it made sense that USC reached out to Donati as a successor to Mike Bohn, who unexpectedly resigned in May of this year.

Donati has ties all over California; he earned his law degree from Wittier Law School; worked with agent Leigh Steinberg in L.A.; he also worked at Cal-Poly.

Do not be surprised if Donati’s name is mentioned as a possible replacement for Gene Smith, the long-time athletic director at Ohio State who recently announced his intentions to retire in 2024.

Donati passing on USC is a major win for TCU, and says so much about how far the university athletic department has come this century.

Saying “No” to USC is not an easy “N-o.”

In a rapidly evolving landscape, USC is one of those places that is secure as a “power school” even amid college sports’ increasing number of fault lines.

Its football program, under former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, looks to be in the best place its been since Pete Carroll left USC to become the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, after the 2009 season.

USC will join UCLA and now fellow Pac-12 members Oregon and Washington when they are added to the Big 10 in 2024.

There is plenty of money at USC. There is plenty of tradition at USC. The facilities at USC look like something out of a Neiman Marcus catalog.

There is a reason why people, such as Donati, pass on the job.

It can be a political nightmare position awash in headaches, drama, and more drama. Although a private school, its athletic department has some of the same “features” as the University of Texas.

USC features a large contingent of wealthy alums and boosters who pay a lot of money to “have a voice.” When things aren’t going well, those voices grow louder.

Those voices can be quite loud when things do go well.

Even if you have plenty of money, getting things done in California is never just a phone call, email or text. The process of completing building projects in Southern California is worse than L.A. traffic.

Between 1993 and 2019, USC’s athletic directors were former USC football players Mike Garrett, Pat Haden and Lynn Swann; each of their respective tenures was filled with the type of drama you’d expect from a place located 12 miles from Universal Studios.

When the school hired Bohn, in 2019, it was the first time in forever the school deliberately found a candidate whose expectations were not created by performance made on a USC football field.

Hiring Donati to replace Bohn would have made sense.

Hired by TCU in 2011 as an assistant athletic director, Donati was quietly tabbed as the successor to athletic director Chris Del Conte.

When Del Conte left TCU for Texas in the winter of 2017, Donati was immediately named his replacement.

Growing into the role, however, took time. Replacing a personality as big as Del Conte’s was a big ask.

Donati’s first “big” moves were to extend the respective contracts of men’s basketball coach Jamie Dixon, and football coach Gary Patterson.

In June of 2021, Donati promoted assistant coach Kirk Saarloos to replace Jim Schlossnagle for the baseball team.

Those were nothing compared to what Donati was confronted with in the fall of 2021. The football program was not in a good place, and the head coach was the single most important figure the school had in 20 years.

Despite Patterson’s stature, Donati made the impossible decision to encourage the coach with his own statue to retire after the season.

A decision of that magnitude required the support of a handful of influential people. He had the majority, not every single person.

As a result of Patterson “resigning” in October of 2021, both Donati and chancellor Victor Boschini were not popular with every single member of the TCU community.

That really didn’t change when, after a lengthy search process, Donati announced that former SMU coach Sonny Dykes was Patterson’s replacement.

Those feelings began to change in the first week of September of 2022 when the TCU football program started a journey that ended with an appearance in the national title game.

The men’s basketball team made the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The baseball team reached the College World Series.

By the middle of June, TCU was finishing its best ever year in college athletics.

Of course USC was going to call its athletic director.

He said no.