USC fires Clay Helton, Donte Williams to serve as interim head coach
A day after Clay Helton reiterated his hope that everyone would give him and his team the full season before reaching any conclusions, USC athletic director Mike Bohn has instead decided he had seen enough and announced he was parting ways with the Trojans' embattled head coach.
Donte Williams, USC's associate head coach/cornerbacks coach, will serve as the interim head coach the rest of the season.
Per USC's news release, Bohn and Helton addressed the team together Monday afternoon.
"As I committed to upon my arrival at USC, during the past two offseasons we provided every resource necessary for our football program to compete for championships," Bohn said in a statement he posted to Twitter. "The added resources carried significantly increased expectations for our team's performance, and it is already evident that, despite the enhancements, those expectations would not be met without a change in leadership.
"This season is just getting started, and we have the opportunity to really do something special with this team and this program. I'm confident that as our interim head coach Donte Williams gives us a higher probability for success the remainder of the season."
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USC entered last Saturday night's game vs. Stanford as 17-point favorites but was dominated by the Cardinal, trailing by 29 points in the fourth quarter before ultimately losing 42-28.
For many Trojans fans, it was a continuation of the themes that have frustrated them so much during Helton's tenure -- the team coming out flat in a game it was supposed to win, the lack of discipline (9 penalties for 111 yards), being out-coached and out-schemed, etc.
Fans booed the team and its coach in the Coliseum, famous Trojans alums like Keyshawn Johnson and Matt Leinart took to Twitter to express their frustration, and the Los Angeles Times ran not one but two columns calling for USC to fire Helton.
USC had Helton do his regularly-scheduled Zoom call with reporters Sunday night, in which he reiterated his hope for patience from the fans. Ultimately, it was the Trojans athletics leadership that decided it couldn't give him that.
"I hope that people will see us all the way through the season and see our total product and our total resume at the end of the year. ... We'll see where we are at the end of the year. And I believe we're going to be happy at that time. I'm disappointed right now, but I believe we'll be happy at the end of the year," Helton had said.
Bohn is hoping that will still be the outcome -- it just won't be with Helton.
“Clay is one of the finest human beings I have met in this industry, and he has been a tremendous role model and mentor to our young men,” Bohn said in his statement. “We appreciate his many years of service to our university and wish him nothing but the very best. Consistent with our values as an institution, he deserves the utmost respect from the Trojan Family during this transition. ...
“I want to be exceptionally clear: our university and its leadership are committed to winning national championships and restoring USC football to glory. This decision represents our next step toward that goal in what has been a thoughtful and strategic process to build a comprehensive football organization equivalent to the premier programs in the modern landscape."
Helton went 46-24 as USC's head coach, including two stints as interim head coach. He took over the team five games into the 2015 season when USC parted ways with Steve Sarkisian and had the interim title removed after that campaign.
Many fans were unhappy with that choice from the start, as Helton had only been an offensive coordinator at Memphis (and for a few months at Arkansas State) before joining USC in 2010 as QBs coach and working his way up to OC in 2013. The initial doubt and pushback on his promotion to head coach set the tone for the sentiment Helton would battle throughout his Trojans tenure.
After going 10-3 with a Rose Bowl victory in his first full season and 11-3 with a Pac-12 championship the next year, the trajectory of the program changed sharply.
Fair or not, many felt star quarterback Sam Darnold had masked others issues within the program and carried the Trojans to the successes of 2016-17.
The critics were emboldened when USC went 5-7 in 2018 -- the program's worst record since 2000, which was the final year before Pete Carroll took over and delivered Trojans football back to the pinnacle of college football.
The program has been chasing those heights ever since, and doubts would only continue to grow that Helton could ever get USC to that level.
During that 2018 season, fans hired a plane to fly over the Coliseum on a game day with a banner imploring former athletic director Lynn Swann to replace Helton, whom he had just given a contract extension in February of that year that runs through the 2023 season.
According to a federal tax return filed by the university and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Helton earned more than $4.5 million from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019, up from $3.2 million the previous fiscal year.
That hefty contract extension kept Helton in place, and the Trojans improved to a middling 8-5 the next year but got beat handily in the Holiday Bowl to Iowa, 49-24, and finished tied for 71st in the Rivals recruiting rankings -- last in the Pac-12 and the program's worst-ever finish.
It was a stunning nadir for a program had never finished worse than 18th in the Rivals recruiting rankings -- in that preceding 2019 class -- and before that had never ended lower than 13th. Again, speculation spiked at the end of that 2019 regular season that the Helton Era could be coming to an end. USC had hired a new athletic director in Bohn that November after Swann was let go in September.
Bohn and senior associate AD Brandon Sosna went to work investing in the infrastructure of the football program, more than doubling the size of the recruiting department and adding to the football support staff.
The defensive staff was changed out after that 2019 season, just like most of the offensive staff had been replaced after the 2018 campaign. After the 2020 season, more changes came with the hiring of a new offensive line coach and new strength and conditioning coach.
Ultimately, it didn't matter how many parts were changed or what was built up around Helton, the fans' frustration kept mounting as the program did not appear to be on a championship course.
While USC went 5-1 during the pandemic-shortened season last year, it needed three wild comebacks to get to that point and then lost rather convincingly to Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game. When the Trojans went down 14-0 and 21-7 in that game, committed three turnovers, racked up 9 penalties for 98 yards and looked overmatched by an unranked Oregon team, it felt all too familiar to so many other big games in which USC struggled under Helton.
Just like the Stanford game on Saturday night.
Since that Pac-12 title in 2017, Helton's program was just 5-12 against teams that finished the respective season with a winning record (not counting the two games this year, as it's unknown how San Jose State and Stanford will finish record-wise).
There was optimism entering this season, but the loss to Stanford on Saturday night amplified the Helton frustration back to its zenith as fans booed the team in the Coliseum and filled up message boards and social media demanding change.
Ultimately, Bohn agreed with them.
"Over the next few months we will conduct a national search for our new head coach. We will actively and patiently pursue a coach who will deliver on the championship aspirations and expectations we all share for our football program," Bohn said. "With our storied history, our talented young roster and the major investments we've made in the infrastructure of our football organization, I'm optimistic that we are better positioned right now than we have been at any other time in the past decade to recruit the best and right leader for us."
In the meantime, it's up to Williams to steer the ship.
Williams, in his second season at USC, is the Trojans' top recruiter and will be key to keeping this current recruiting class, which features two five-star commits in cornerback Domani Jackson and defensive end Mykel Williams, in place.
“Donte is an experienced and well-respected coach who is renowned for his ability to develop relationships with student-athletes, and I appreciate his willingness to take on this challenge," Bohn said. "We still have control of our own destiny in the Pac-12 Conference, a tremendously talented group of student-athletes, and complete faith in the phenomenal assistant coaches and outstanding support staff in the John McKay Center.”