Analysis: Even if USC wins, Clay Helton can't

“Our mindset is to focus only on what we can control. We can only control getting to the Rose Bowl. Winning our conference and going to the Rose Bowl is what our goal is every year. Our goal isn't about national championships, because we don't have control of that -- that's in somebody else's hands. We found that out years ago [2003], when we were No. 1 but then we were No. 3. We already knew that but that just proved it. If we win our games and we're out there and they want us to go somewhere else, then we'll go. We love the Rose Bowl." -- Pete Carroll, 2008

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While Lynn Swann’s expectations for Clay Helton and the USC football team have never been clear throughout their three years together, there’s no mistaking what an exasperated fan base is ultimately demanding from the program. It’s exactly what the people asked for after three seasons with Pete Carroll:

Win the national championship.

On Wednesday at Pac-12 Media Day, which has annually been a launching point for such discussion regarding the Trojans, few were even talking about USC winning so much as the Pac-12 South Division title.

“Right now you guys have Utah as the favorite. Understandable. Very understandable,” senior defensive end Christian Rector said.

The Trojans obviously do not enter the 2019 season with the same expectations that they carried as recently as last year, when they were predicted to win said division and internally believed they could make another run at a New Year’s Six Bowl.

“There was kind of a little bit of cockiness coming off that Cotton Bowl appearance,” Rector said. “Going into that (2018) season we thought we had a lot of returners on defense, we thought we had this All-American quarterback who’s going to come in and sling it and it just wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. That humbled us a lot last season.

“So this season we definitely have a different energy and a different mindset going into this one.”

That mindset isn’t focused at all on the national picture but the regional one.

“We’re looking to win the Pac-12 South … and then win the Pac-12, and then go from there,” Rector said.

Most every USC fan would take that -- from the Trojans. But is that enough to change their minds about Clay Helton? The response to last season, which saw home attendance hit its lowest point in three decades, and even a 2017 campaign that included a Pac-12 title but also lopsided losses to national contenders Notre Dame and Ohio State, suggests no.

Unless USC wins it all, Helton won’t be fully supported.

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