Someone Else Neglects To Name Clay Helton Pac-12 Coach Of Year

So the Pac-12 coaches are not alone. College Football News has named Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez its Pac-12 coach of the year.

Excerpt: “It wasn’t a great year for Pac-12 coaches. Clay Helton? USC won the Pac-12, but it was good enough to get to the College Football Playoff, and didn’t.”

78 thoughts on “Someone Else Neglects To Name Clay Helton Pac-12 Coach Of Year

  1. The eyes don’t lie, the media and people do, so don’t fall for USC’s 10-2 record , because it was more Sam Darnold, then the coaching staff

    • Which would kind of negate RRods success, right? I mean it was kind of more Khalil Tate, than the coaching staff.

      • UA was picked to finish last, they did better than that. SC was picked to go to the CFP, they didn’t.

        • But UAs overrachieving was due to Tate, not RR. The team stayed terrible on defense, and whenever Tate was out the game.

          • Golllyy Noiid is such an expert on UA, yet he didn’t bother to watch the game against ASU.

          • Again, didn’t play in the second half except for one possession. You’re due for a timeout

          • And then didn’t play second half. You said he blew the lead for them. Please try to explain your dim witted argument that he blew the lead while not playing.

          • When did Darnold miss 90% of a 2nd half because he was injured, and the team blew a lead he helped build? Must’ve missed that game. __________

      • Golllly Nooiiid Logic”: This brainless rah rah gives the UA’s QB credit for their success over their coaching staff, but bad mouths Sam Darnold and gives all the credit to the hired help.

        • Tate never lost the game to a team he should’ve won against. Darnold has turned the ball over so many times, and then Wolf tries to say it’s the teams fault and never his, i started following this blog around the WSU game and he was still putting the blame on mostly everyone other than Sam. Plus you’re still not defending him continuously leaving points on the board, and then saying he needs to save the team. Please. There’s no need to save the team if you don’t turn the ball over a hundred times keeping the inferior teams in the game.

          • You mean besides Tate blowing a 24-14 halftime lead to ASU? Gollllly Nooiiid you’ve done it again!

          • Lmao YOU must’ve been the one who didn’t watch… Tate played for one possession in the 2nd half before he got hurt. But thanks for playing.

    • Was it SD fumbles and interceptions also or just the TD passes? In every game we lost SD struggled so it that all on the coaches or is he ever responsible for poor reads and dropping the ball?

        • Take away Love from stanfurd? Or rosen from ruins? Or Kahlil Tate? I should go on but why.. you’ve closed your mind to any rationale.

        • Who do you replace him with? Jack sears who’s getting all the snaps in spring and fall probably about the same. Despite your feelings otherwise USC was more physical then Stanford and Texas.

          • Too bad Gomer couldn’t get a big lead on most of the sh!tty teams he played to get Sears in the games

          • I’d say we beat TEXAS with a little luck and because of the most timely strip-fumble I’ve ever seen by Christian Rector. I’ve also never seen such a perfectly executed mini-hail Mary in my life. It was truly a thing of beauty.

        • I think it would be 9-4 losing to texas and one game against Stanford, the early one. By the end of the season, Fink would be comfortable with the situation.

        • What do you think it would be Fred. I would say 10-3. Fink would have matured, and Sears would have gotten PT also.

      • It’s their responsibilty to coach him up, his footwork was bad, didn’t seem like it was corrected. He regressed, is that all on SD or do the coaches ever get blamed for anything ?

    • Would you actually fire Helton with an 11-2, or an 11-3 record if we lose to OHIO ST in the Cotton?

      • Helton’s doesn’t deserve to be fired, but his record won’t make him immune to criticism, either, because he deserves it

        • Urban Meyer deserves criticism too because his team got slaughtered twice and once by an IOWA team that went 4-5 in the B10. So does Nick Saban, who couldn’t even win the weaker-than-normal SEC and never beat anyone good all year. That puts CH in pretty good company, which is why he’s a Bear Bryant COY finalist.

        • Here’s One for for Fred.
          It’s called the myth of David Shaw.

          i don’t care who wins coach of the year. nor do i think clay did a particularly great job this year. not even close. i have plenty of complaints. and this is not a comparison of the 2.
          but the myth that usc is infinitely more talented than stanford is at this point laughable. and it would be nice if folks assessed other coaches and staff with something close to consistency. a few thoughts:
          1. for years, the story on these boards was…”look at all the players we have being drafted, how do we ever lose…” this was particularly true under carroll – of course, there’s no adjustment for the more recent facts. we have been doing ok in the nfl draft. ok. last year, no one was impressed when we went up there and handed it to washington….that is just doing what we are “supposed to be doing” because, after all, we have way more talent than them. they had more players taken in 2017 draft than we did and will do well again this year on draft.
          2. everyone loves harbaugh. hey, guess what, we had a better record than them last year. they had more than twice as many players drafted as we did. how could that be? imagine we had 11 players drafted and lost 3 games. it was bad enough around here when we lost 3 games and had 5 players drafted.
          3. as it relates to stanford specifically, they had 2 first rounders last year. 4 in the last 3 years. they have done as well or better than us in 3 of the last 4 drafts. love is their 3rd player invited to nyc for heisman show in recent years. guys, enough. stanford is NOT the gutty little intellectuals overachieving against the supremely athletic, more talented trojans. stanford has a full blown, talent-laden roster. nearly all of their offensive linemen end up in nfl camps, many get drafted. want to be an nfl tight end, why not go to stanford? they have future nfl players at every level on defense. they had 5 or more players taken in the draft from 2014 to 2016. and in 2017, they only had 2; of course, they were both first rounders. according to most of the experts on this board, if you have 2 nfl first rounders taken, how on earth do you lose a game?
          at the most important position in all of sports: they have 5 quarterbacks on their roster: 1 is a 3-star, 3 are 4-stars and 1 is a 5-star. we have 3: 1 3-star and 2 4-stars.
          4. in my not-so-humble opinion, if we had stanford’s roster and finished 9-4 with a loss to SDSU, this board would be in full-blown melt down mode. if anything, in that case, the board would be correct. or at least closer to correct than it is when we finish 11-2 with our roster. i can already hear the whines “how come chryst isn’t better after all this time on campus?” “why didn’t we start costello sooner?” “how can we have the best running back in college football, 4 and 5 star offensive linemen and too many tight ends to count and we still can’t just run all over everyone we play?”
          5. so the notion that this season was a success for stanford is totally ridiculous. that shaw and his staff maximized talent, which is every coach’s job. or got closer to maximizing talent than any other coach in the pac-12 is insane.
          i don’t care about clay winning it. i don’t think he maximized talent all that well this year either. but shaw had a mediocre year with a very good roster. and if those players were wearing cardinal and gold, i can literally guarantee the same folks complaining about clay would be going bananas.
          fight on,
          have been saying that for a few years now. The “Nerd Nation” mantra is a total myth.
          Keller Chryst was the #1 QB in the nation out of high school.
          Stanford recruited the two top linemen (Sarrell/Little) last year.
          They have studs all over the place.
          Their secondary of Meeks, Holder, Reid, Buncom is one of the best in the country.
          The NFL folks are becoming more leery of drafting Stanford guys as they are “maxed out” in college.
          Joshua Garnett drafted by the 49ers in the 1st round is a bust, and Solomon Thomas is about as good as he will get.
          These players have “maxed out” their frames and will not get bigger/stronger. Shannon Turley does a great job of S&C (another hot topic).
          Harrison Phillips is another Stanford linemen who will likely get drafted early and does not have much room for adding strength/weight.
          Just one more. Of Stanford Starting OL, 3 of the 5 are either seniors or red shirt seniors. Their linebacker are all seniors. Peter Kalambayi Being a red shirt senior. Stanford more times then not recruit less then 25. According to 247 sports they recruited 14 in 2017. Year after year Shaw has a veteran OL. Most years he has a veteran team. Most other teams don’t have this luxury. Because of Stanford’s academic standards this alows Shaw to recruit national. Not every coach has this advantage.
          If Shaw was so good, why hasn’t he developed a good QB. He was Harbaughs QB coach at US? He was Harbaughs OC at Stanford. Stanford has had two really good QB’s in last ten years? Both were recruited when Harbaugh was at Stanford. My opinion is Peterson is the best in the PAC.

    • Scottie loves to hate Clay – you should have heard him talking to the Ohio radio folks.

      • I listened to it. Seems like he was auditioning for an intern position covering ohio state. It was pathetic.

  2. The current contract is only firm for 2018. If Lynn Swann ‘knew’ Clay Helton had met USC coach spectations based on the talent hailed tops in the conference and among top 5 nationally Swann would have already rushed to secure Helton’s presence at USC. Swann didn’t

    • If Clay Helton wants to stay at USC, he has to realize his choices of assistant coaches is a lot to be desired. He needs to up his game on that point more than anything else he does.

    • Talking about Swann’s support for Helton now is premature.

      I would wait until after the bowl game. If you see coaching staff changes after the bowl, then you can infer that Swann is not happy and is pushing for improvement.

      If there are no changes, then the thinking is Swann is content with what USC has and you can ask the question why an extension has not been forthcoming yet.

      I’ve heard Swann is not completely happy but his hands are kind of tied because you don’t fire a coach who went 11-2 and won the conference. I think he is trying to hedge his bets by holding back on an extension. At any other school, Helton’s 11-2 mark and being undefeated at home over two seasons would have already gotten him the extra years.

      But not at USC where expectations are ridiculously high.

      • Swann won’t do what the idiot AD did with Tollner after he won the 85 RB, he won’t extend him.

        • I’m sure there are contract details at play as well.

          Giving Helton an extension now brings buyouts into the discussion. If Helton does get an extension, you can be sure those sliding scale buyouts that coaches have is going to be on the high end for years one and two. A hefty buyout in those years is just going to handcuff Swann from making a move if the need arises. I’m sure he’s trying to give himself some flexibility in case things go south after Darnold leaves.

          UCLA had to pay Jim Mora 12 million just to fire him. Swann is too astute to walk into that kind of bear trap without knowing what he is getting in return.

          • Laser accurate – the money Guerrero gave away was mind boggling not even adding in the money owed the assistants as well. Mora was an ‘average’ coach best suited to a team in the All America or Western Athletic and even there one of the lower winning programs.

            To allow your program to get lassoed into a commitment even approaching what Mora was able to get ucla to pony up is unbelievably foolish by Guerrero.

            Swann knows that just glad Haden only gave Helton a firm 3 years.

      • If there has been no interest in Helton from other schools it kind of puts Swann in the drivers seat. Coaches get extended when there is someone talking or pursuing them from another school.

        • The thinking often goes that a job like USC is comparable to Bama, ND, Texas, Ohio State and Oklahoma. One of the top jobs in all of CFB.

          I don’t really remember when a USC HC has had to field offers from other CFB schools. Going from USC to any school not listed above is seen as a downgrade. (Tollner went from USC to SDSU but only after he was fired by USC; SDSU didn’t come knocking while he was HC. And John Robinson took the UNLV job after he was fired).

          The best way to gauge interest is to see if the NFL starts calling.

          • Yup Larry Smith headed for MO and oblivion while Hackett went to the NFL as an OC.

            100% right one doesn’t leave USC because a better offer is out there – there aren’t any.

          • Seldom do coaches at schools like USC , go out on the recruiting trails with just three years left on their contract, especially after a 10-2 record

          • Really? Where do you come up with this stuff? I guess Nick Saban should cancel all his current recruiting trips. Sometimes I think you are just Wolf in disguise.

        • That is exactly right – if Helton were a hot property others AD’s would be asking about how he feels staying on at USC and would be entertain an offer elsewhere.

          It matters not what fans or onlookers think or believe rather it is, esp in this profession, his own peers and I don’t sense many believe Clay Helton is the reason USC is 11 – 2 in 2017 nor 10 – 3 last year. If he were deemed otherwise he’d already being pressuring Swann for a full on multi-clause extension.

      • Swann made Helton ship off his younger brother. I don’t think CH is happy about it, but to his credit, he chose his job over family and made Tee very happy in one fell swoop.

        • It may have been tough for Clay to let him go but in the end I think Clay has the maturity to realize things needed to change. Ty landed a good gig, maybe it will work out.

          • Haden knew he’d stepped in it and wasn’t about to award an assistant coach with a 5 year deal esp this being his 1st stint as a head coach who, having succeeded Steve Sarkisian, was 4 – 4 in 2015.

    • I’m sure a COY award will be heading your way very soon. Get the resume ready and keep your head up

  3. Apparently Gomer looked down and depressed the other day, I’m sure he was told to get rid of his brother

    • Under the Instagram hastag uscfootball there is the video clip from the end of the Pac12 game at the top of Ty hugging his brother Clay. And then there is OC Tee Martin shaking hands with USC Athletics administrator Steve Lopes. Lopes is one of Haden’s cronies and has been influential in the last few HC football hires.

      Tee knows who has influence and knew who to schmooze with after the game. Sometimes knowing who the power brokers are can be helpful when jobs are on the line.

      Ty was kissing the ring of the wrong guy!

  4. My guess will be after the 2019 season. if he goes to another major bowl game, then I think he will.

  5. Poor ARIZ. They finished 7-5, were only 5-4 in the P12, got punished by their major rival ASU, 42-20 and now are stuck in the Foster Farms Bowl.

    Rich Rid lost 3 of his last 4, his only victory coming against lowly ORE ST.

    Rich Rod only won this award because he was titanic 3-9 failure the year before.

    What they really meant to do was give Rich Rod the P12 Mediocre Coach of the Year.

    I do really like to watch his sideline tantrums though, where he starts to look like he’s losing consciousness while staring into the abyss and overcome by anxiety. I think I caught a shot of that look when USC was running away from his team this year in L.A.

    Overall, great to see David Shaw, Clay Helton and Rich Rod share the wealth, though all those Chris Petersen lovers (I used to be one too) must be dismayed their hero couldn’t even crack the top 3 with a powerful UW line-up.

  6. He doesn’t extend him because he doesn’t have to and doesn’t want to get locked into one of those bad buyouts that dominate the game nowadays. Everyone knows Helton has to prove himself post-Darnold. Not sure why anyone would even consider extending Helton yet.

  7. I say this with all respect –every single person who posts on this site is full of BS. If any of us were truly looped into the powers that be ( ie Swann; or the BOT) we would not posting on a blog that only has as many readers as it does because it is free. People that really know what is happening don’t share their tales with the great unwashed masses. All of us take bits of info from here & there and draw our own conclusions. Some are more informed than others and some are just plain nuts.

    • True but it also is a place to hear what others think based on past instances elsewhere and compare that to today.

      • True. But we tend to glamorize the past and forget that every pass wasn’t caught and every 3rd & 2 wasn’t made. We also don’t fess up to our “mistakes “of the past. I have a friend who was so pissed when PC was hired he sent a box of SC hats/shirts/etc to Heritage Hall & said he was done with SC forever. But when PC started winning he was the first to jump on the bandwagon–but the last to admit he was wrong. There are about 5 guys on this site I view as reasonably informed and about 5 who are nut jobs. The rest of the bunch are just like me.–mildly annoying.

  8. The Early Signing Period really helps the Big Ten…..for the last 20 years or so, their teams have been highly ranked (and attractive to recruits) before the Bowl Season Starts, then Kaboom!!!

    • History always comes into play and certain programs have the history and others choked. Recruiting comes down to how mom and dad feel. Ask the Ball brothers. lol

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