Commentary: Why departed AD Jen Cohen deserves an ovation for her time at UW

It’s a tradition in most sports to show former players on the JumboTron if they’re in the building – whether they are retired or donning another team’s uniform. What I can’t remember seeing (and that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened) is a former athletic director popping up on the big screen during his or her homecoming.

But if Jen Cohen comes back to Husky Stadium or Alaska Airlines Arena and has her mug displayed for everyone to see, she deserves an ovation. Her record on Montlake may not have been perfect, but it is one to be praised.

It was announced Monday that Cohen had accepted the position as USC’s athletic director after serving in the same role at Washington for the past seven years. She took the job just weeks after pushing the Huskies into the Big Ten, likely securing the athletic department financial security that would have eluded it had it stayed in the Pac-12.

It is still TBD whether that was the right move for Washington (or college football for that matter), but it looks promising. But Cohen’s other accomplishments during her time at UW are far more concrete.

For starters, she was instrumental in luring football coach Chris Petersen to the school while serving as the associate AD. Cohen was the only other employee from Washington to join then-athletic director Scott Woodward on a trip to Boise, Idaho, to offer Petersen the gig in 2013.

Perhaps Petersen still would have taken the job at Washington – where he won two Pac-12 titles and led the Huskies to the College Football Playoff in 2016 – without Cohen. But given the acclaim Chris gave Jen before she took over as AD at UW seven years back, it’s clear those two were close.

Additionally, Cohen seems to have hit big with current football coach Kalen DeBoer. DeBoer’s hiring in November 2021 came on the heels of one of the most disappointing Huskies seasons ever – when the team finished 4-8 and saw coach Jimmy Lake get fired before the Apple Cup. But in one of the more impressive year-to-year turnarounds to date, the Huskies went 11-2 last season behind DeBoer, who lured quarterback Michael Penix Jr. from Indiana and has them in position to win a Pac-12 championship.

The word “seems” is significant in the above paragraph, because it also seemed Cohen had made a massive score by hiring Mike Hopkins to coach the Washington men’s basketball program in 2017. The Huskies hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in six years despite doing so six times in 2004-11. Hopkins won Pac-12 Coach of the Year in his first season, took the Huskies to the Big Dance in his second season (while also winning conference COY), and upon signing an $17.5 extension that Cohen offered that March … has overseen a team that has sat near the bottom of the Pac-12 ever since.

Perhaps not Cohen’s best decision (although she still hired a man who broke the program’s NCAA tournament drought.) And perhaps hiring Jody Wynn – who coached the women’s basketball team to a 6-45 Pac-12 record over four years – wasn’t her best choice, either.

Like I said, not perfect – but plenty to be proud of.

Cohen was AD in 2018 when the Huskies signed an apparel deal with Adidas that netted them $119 million over 10 years. The annual $11.9 million windfall nearly quadrupled the yearly sum the school’s partnership with Nike was yielding. Dollars are every bit as important as dubs when you’re sitting in the AD’s chair, and Cohen produced in both departments. Her engineering Washington’s move into the Big Ten reflects her business acumen as well.

Schools such as USC have the resources to hire just about anyone they see fit. USC’s president, Carol Folt, said Monday that she was flooded with hundreds of résumés for the job. Cohen earned it.

Perhaps this move never happens if Cohen made more money on Montlake. Before netting a 63% raise in 2018, Jen was paid less than any of the other AD in the Power Five conferences.

Or maybe this was simply an inevitable switch for a Southern California native joining one of the most prestigious athletic departments in the country – a department, mind you, that will earn almost twice as much money as UW from its media-rights deal with the Big Ten.

The Jen Cohen era at Washington is an amalgam of highs, lows, blessings and blows. Ultimately, though, it was a success.

The woman may not deserve a statue – but she does deserve a salute.