USC Official Makes Splash as He Settles Bet

As he prepared to settle a bet Wednesday afternoon, Duncan Murdoch, director of admissions at USC, wasn’t sure which was going to be harder to pull off: executing a one-and-a-half dive off a high tower or squeezing into a Speedo bathing trunk at age 56.

Murdoch got himself in this little mess last fall when he challenged his staff to boost the enrollment of the university’s first-year students to more than 2,800 and also to increase the academic level of those incoming students.

Do it, he offered, and he would perform the platform dive.

His colleagues took him up on it.

Joe Allen, who is in charge of recruitment, aggressively sought out students nationally and abroad. By summer he had brought in more than 2,900 freshmen, about 100 of them national merit scholars.

Murdoch had been a springboard diver, about 35 years ago, but said he had no experience with platform diving. When he realized he would have to make good on his end of the deal, he introduced himself to USC’s diving coach, Jeff Schaefer.

“I told him I had a problem. I need to be able to do a one-and-a-half off that tower,” Murdoch said.

The coach trained Murdoch for two months, starting with dives off the side of the pool and working their way up to the tower for the dive.

Murdoch said that he plans to make the same challenge in 1997 and also to increase the number of national merit scholars to at least 130.

“If they can get 130, I’ll do a two-and-a-half next year,” he laughed.