LOS ANGELES — Lincoln Riley led Oklahoma to three College Football Playoff appearances and four Big 12 championships in his five seasons with the program.
Steve Sarkisian has guided Texas to back-to-back CFP semifinal trips and a conference title over the past two seasons. Lane Kiffin is one of only two coaches in Ole Miss history who have won 10 games in a season more than once.
All three have strong resumes. But since Pete Carroll left USC in January 2010, the only coach to roam the sidelines and lead the program to a conference championship or a Rose Bowl victory is … Clay Helton. And he did both.
Helton is also the only coach of the group who suffered a losing season (2018), and he was likely on his way to a second losing campaign in four seasons, but was fired after two games in 2021.
Helton will return to the Coliseum this weekend — for the first time since his firing four years ago — when he brings Georgia Southern to Los Angeles to face a USC team looking to get the program back on an upward trajectory.
Now, with four years of distance, how should Helton’s tenure be viewed? And what will the reaction to him be in the Coliseum on Saturday?
In November 2021, USC stunned the college football world by hiring Riley away from Oklahoma. Aside from a great first season, Riley’s tenure has been rather disappointing. One game into his fourth season, Riley’s record at USC is 27-14, which is rough considering he started 11-1 in 2022 and has gone just 16-13 since.
Over the past few years, it’s been easy for observers on social media to highlight Riley’s record through any number of games and compare it to Helton’s. At various points, Helton’s has been better. Through his first 41 games as USC’s coach — starting when his interim tag was removed on Nov. 30, 2015 — Helton went 26-15.
Lincoln Riley is 22-10 through 32 games as the USC head coach. Clay Helton was 23-9.
— David Woods (@daviddavidwoods) October 6, 2024
So it’s easy to think the two tenures are comparable. That’s also missing some context. Helton did win a Rose Bowl after the 2016 season and a Pac-12 title in 2017, which he absolutely deserves credit for. But those rosters were largely built with players Sarkisian recruited.
Helton took over a roster that featured Sam Darnold, Adoree’ Jackson, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Ronald Jones, Uchenna Nwosu and Rasheem Green. The Trojans’ three recruiting classes before Helton’s promotion ranked 13th (2013), 10th (2014) and second (2015).
The 2013 class was Kiffin’s last at USC and ranked “only” 13th because of NCAA-mandated scholarship reductions placed upon the program as part of the Reggie Bush saga years earlier. That was a 12-player class, and 10 of those signees ranked among the top 150 prospects nationally.
Clay Helton is 20-20 in three-plus seasons at Georgia Southern. (Petre Thomas / Imagn Images)
It was an ideal setup for any coach to step into, and even though the Trojans won the Pac-12 in 2017, that season was still a disappointment considering the talent on hand.
The main problem was that as Sarkisian’s recruits cycled out of the program — and the roster was mainly comprised of Helton’s recruits — the results got worse.
Helton went 13-12 over the 2018 and 2019 seasons, and the talk became less about national championships and more about winning the Pac-12 South. The standards had clearly been lowered. And the recruiting suffered, with classes that ranked 19th in 2019 and an unthinkable 59th in 2020.
A common theme during Helton’s tenure was that he was such a nice guy and was well-liked by everyone. There’s no debating that. But that contributed to a culture in which there was a lack of accountability, as The Athletic detailed when he was fired. That much was evident on the field as the same undisciplined mistakes kept popping up over and over, and teams that had really high expectations looked lethargic and underwhelming from week to week.
While Helton reached heights no other USC coach has since Carroll, his on-field lows were alarming. The 5-7 season in 2018 was bad and raised doubts about his long-term outlook. He coached in 2021 for only two games. That team ended up 4-8 and was the least-talented USC roster in recent memory.
His downturn also occurred when the Pac-12 was arguably at its weakest point in decades (until, of course, realignment ripped the league apart).
And there were just far too many embarrassing, non-competitive losses — 52-6 to Alabama to kick off his first full season as head coach in 2016, 49-14 at Notre Dame with a team that had Playoff aspirations in 2017, 56-24 at home in 2019 to an Oregon program that raided Southern California for high-end recruits and another home loss to the Ducks in the 2020 Pac-12 title game.
Helton’s finale was a 42-28 home loss to Stanford, which wasn’t as close as the score indicated. Boos rained down from a nearly empty Coliseum in the fourth quarter. Afterward, Helton said, “It’s Game 2. It’s Game 2. … We didn’t play our best tonight, but I know this: At the end of the season, see where we’re at. See where we’re at.”
Helton didn’t coach another game at USC.
So how should his tenure be viewed?
I think Helton will probably be remembered as a good man who wasn’t a good enough coach to run a high-level program. His ascension to the head-coaching role had as much to do with the dysfunction in the athletic department during those times as anything.
If you’re a Trojans fan, Helton did bring some joyous moments to the program, but the negatives brought some frustrating and shocking lows that are hard to shake and set the program back several years.
Riley has not been perfect. He’s made mistakes, too. We’ve highlighted the lack of return on USC’s investment in him in the past. His tenure might just highlight how hard it is to win at USC. But we also acknowledge he stepped into a bad situation, which is why he had to turn over so much of the roster upon his arrival. There were some good pieces for him to work with, such as a veteran offensive line, edge rusher Tuli Tuipulotu and standout safety Calen Bullock, but there wasn’t enough talent on hand.
The perception of USC took a big hit during the later stages of Helton’s tenure as the Trojans weren’t competing for championships and weren’t playing in big games. Meanwhile, Oregon emerged as a West Coast power, dominating on the field and in recruiting. That’s something Riley is still trying to overcome.
USC is in a tenuous spot — on more stable ground, but definitely not where it thought it would be four years after moving on from Helton.
So, how will the former coach be received when he comes out of the Coliseum tunnel Saturday?
I was at those games in 2018 and 2019 and remember how toxic things were in the crowds, in my Twitter mentions and in the comment sections on these stories.
Clay Helton leaving the field after #USC’s loss tonight pic.twitter.com/4W6ljI4txX
— Antonio Morales (@AntonioCMorales) December 28, 2019
So the only cheering I expect will be reserved for USC when — and it better not be if, for Riley’s sake — the Trojans walk off the field as the winners Saturday.
(Top photo: Harry How / Getty Images)
