Pat Haden, who made $2.9 million in 2014, will step down as the Southern California's athletic director in nine days. While this was a move he announced in February, it's looking awfully prescient now.
According to a dynamite report released by The Los Angeles Times, Haden, the man who hired Steve Sarkisian, commandeered a charitable education foundation to help needy young people go to college and used it to enrich himself, his family, and Southern California.
Under Haden's leadership as board chairman, however, the $25-million foundation became a lucrative source of income for him and two of his family members -- even as its scholarship spending plunged to a three-decade low and the size of its endowment stagnated, a Times investigation has found.
Haden, his daughter and sister-in-law together collected about $2.4 million from the foundation for part-time roles involving as little as one hour of work per week, according to the foundation’s federal tax returns for 1999 to 2014, the most recent year available.
Half of that, about $1.2 million, went to Haden. His annual board fees have been as high as $84,000; the foundation paid him $72,725 in 2014.
According to tax records obtained by The Times, donations to USC outpaced the next two schools combined from 1999 to 2014.
Not bad work if you can get it (and can still sleep at night).
