USC fires head coach!!

Best of luck to Donte! I hope he is successful and they hire him full time. He was one of the coaches during the Riley era that I thought was actually competent.

 
Helton went 46-24 while head coach at USC. Talk about some high expectations! I personally enjoy seeing USC struggle, but for a team with national championship thoughts every year, I suppose it makes sense to move on. Hoping that Donte does very well and gets an opportunity to be named Head Coach. 

 
If the leash was that short usc should have fired him last year and went after a better coach!  I did just learn that the AD there came from Cincinnati and was the guy that hired Luke Fickell so that's a  possibility. 

 
Helton went 46-24 while head coach at USC. Talk about some high expectations! I personally enjoy seeing USC struggle, but for a team with national championship thoughts every year, I suppose it makes sense to move on. Hoping that Donte does very well and gets an opportunity to be named Head Coach. 
It's not like Southern California had turned into the UofAZ. Helton won the PAC in 2017 and narrowly lost the PACCG in 2020.  Not that I had an interest in Clay's continued employment  :rolleyes:

 
Being fired right now, I’m guessing there was more to this than results on the field. 
Yeah, there has to be more to this than a 14 point loss to Stanford. 46-24…and people accuse Nebraska of being unreasonable over much worse records. :facepalm:

 
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Why do they always fire a coach during the season?  This isn't the NFL.

Through 2009

Pete Carroll

Since 2010

Lane Kiffin

Ed Orgeron

Clay Helton

Steve Sarkisian

Clay Helton

Donte Williams (current)

 
Being fired right now, I’m guessing there was more to this than results on the field. 


Not really sure there is.  He's pretty much been on the hot seat since going 5-7 in 2018.

I've seen a theory that once you've had a season bad enough to almost get fired, you pretty much never recover.  All they're waiting for is just enough to get past that tipping point and you're gone.  Seems to make sense.  His results since have been good but there's just enough bad for people to forget the good.

I also saw a stat that his record with Sam Darnold at QB was excellent but he's barley over .500 without him.

 
Just read Stu Mandel's mailbag and he threw out PJ Fleck as a potential name for the job and you know what?  It's not the craziest thing I've heard.  Fleck has the same rah-rah personality that Pete Carroll has and as much as it pains me to say this, he's done a really nice job in 2 spots building up the culture and he would take the USC job in a heartbeat.  The interesting litmus test for me would be if Fleck's personality would be viewed as authentic to big-time recruits.  

 
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