Tanner gives insight on how USC landed coach ‘in great demand’ in Mike Bobo
The moves South Carolina football made right after the 2019 season concluded came pretty fast.
One day after the season finale, the quarterbacks coach was let go and the offensive coordinator was demoted. It took a little more than a week to get the man who filled both those positions, Mike Bobo, squared away and approved to be a Gamecock.
That kind of arrangement means a lot of moving pieces. USC athletics director Ray Tanner went on Carolina Calls on the Gamecock Sports Network Thursday and gave a little sense of how everything fell into place.
“When the season ended and coach (Will) Muschamp said he wanted to do some things differently, as it happened Mike Bobo became available,” Tanner said. “He had a lot of suitors, I’ll be honest with you. I’m just the the athletics director. I was in constant contact with Muschamp, (Bobo) was in great demand.”
Bobo was reportedly linked to Georgia, his and Mushamp’s alma mater, as well as South Carolina, after Colorado State negotiated its way out of its deal with him following a five-year tenure.
USC already had the third-highest paid public school offensive coordinator in Bryan McClendon at $1 million a year. The school approved Bobo’s deal at $200,000 more than that per season for two years.
Bobo went 28-35 in his time at Fort Collins. Defense was more the issue than offense in that run, and before that, he’d taken talented outfits at Georgia and molded them into some of the more productive offenses in the SEC from 2007-14.
He’ll be taking over a USC group that struggled for much of 2019 and loses its top three backs, top wide receiver and top tight end. He inherits most of a returning offensive line, some four-star pass catchers and former top-100 recruit Ryan Hilinski at QB.
Bobo also dealt with a difficult health issue during his time with the Rams, but that didn’t seem to slow his pursuit of a next step.
“A lot of times when a coach leaves a position, sometimes they take some time off or they take a year off,” Tanner said. “Mike was ready to jump back in. We had to battle a little bit, a few other schools, but they have a really good relationship, he had a chance to visit and really liked what we had here and the opportunities and we got a young quarterback he can coach. So we’re delighted to have him.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2019 at 8:42 AM.
