Shout out to reader Bryan Knight for bringing this to my attention.

Here’s a clip from the Dan Patrick show today where the radio host discusses the possibility of Urban Meyer returning to the sidelines as USC’s coach. In the snippet, Patrick is sharing information received from a source, which includes a reference to Villanova’s Mark Jackson as well:

Said Patrick:

I had a source who reached out to me when I was talking about this. He said, ‘had inside information from a USC faculty member, who said it would be tough for the new female president to hire Urban Meyer at this point with his past, looked past spousal abuse and then lied about it.’ Then (the source) said, ‘if you’re looking for an athletic director for USC, it won’t be Gene Smith at Ohio State.’ Because I was saying, you’ve got a new president from Ohio, you could bring in the athletic director from Ohio State, then you could bring in Urban Meyer. (Reading from source) – ‘I was told Mark Jackson, who is the Athletic Director at Villanova, used to be at USC, Pete Carroll guy, he would be the guy that they would probably bring in, and then he would bring in his own coach.

So that’s interesting.

Jackson was the senior associate athletic director at Southern Cal and came to Villanova back in August of 2015, replacing Vince Nicastro, who is now Big East deputy commissioner. Jackson is more of a football guy, having worked on Carroll’s New England staff before reuniting with him in Los Angeles. He also had a stint with the Oakland Raiders.

USC’s most recent athletic director, Lynn Swann, stepped down this week, so they need a replacement out there. The Trojans are 2-1 after last week’s loss to BYU and went 5-7 last year after two straight ten-win seasons under Clay Helton. If they were looking for a football dude to run the athletic department and reinvigorate that program, Mark Jackson would, indeed, make a lot of sense.

Here’s an article that also cites sources in saying that Jackson is in the mix.