If college football isn’t played this fall or in the spring of 2021, Clay Helton will be the head coach of USC football 12 months from now. He will have made it through another year on the job… without coaching a game.
As things stand, the fragility of college football for the next 12 months is so pronounced that even if a season is played, the outcome might not affect the employment status of Helton or any other coach.
We already know the length of the season will be shorter than usual, after the Big Ten and Pac-12 have downscaled their seasons to conference-only schedules. We also know fans won’t attend games in numbers beyond 20 to 35 percent of capacity (providing a generous high-end estimate), which itself makes any college football game played through June of 2021 (under a possible spring plan) a highly irregular event. Even if a coach stumbles, the circumstances might make athletic directors such as Mike Bohn reluctant to fire a coach.
Then add in the budgetary bloodbath being endured by athletic departments across the country.
Clay Helton could coach poorly this next season — if eight or 10 games are played — and still not suffer any immediate consequences. USC fans have to consider that (terrible) possibility.
However, it seems safe to say that if a season is played in the next 12 months, and Clay Helton doesn’t handle it well, he would — at best — enter 2021 on the hot seat. At worst, Bohn could fire Helton and give Graham Harrell the keys to the kingdom for a one-year 2021 trial run at a reduced cost. Then the program could see where it stands entering 2022. By then, it could make a run at a big name.
Why are we talking about Clay Helton’s hot seat when no football is being played? It’s very simple: With Alabama and Notre Dame not on the 2020 schedule after the Pac-12’s conference-only adjustment — announced on Friday — Helton has only one measuring stick if this season is played: the Pac-12.
Alabama and Notre Dame were always the toughest tasks for USC on the 2020 schedule. Now that they are out of the way, USC just has to compete against the Pac-12. Given that Utah should regress to some extent after an 11-win campaign in 2019, and given that USC was able to beat that Utah team anyway — with a third-string quarterback — the Trojans should expect to make the Pac-12 Championship Game if a season is played this fall or next spring.
Maybe Utah will overachieve and go 8-1 if the Pac-12 uses a nine-game league schedule. Maybe Utah will be so good that USC can produce a good season and yet not make the Pac-12 title game. If that happens, frustration about the season — while still real — would be tempered by the reality which sometimes emerges in sports: You can play well, but the opponent just might be better. If that happens, tip the cap to the Utes and move on.
But: If the Pac-12 has a nine-game schedule, USC should be no worse than 7-2. A 6-3 record in a nine-game slate — knowing that Alabama and Notre Dame were removed from the Trojans’ path — would be plainly unacceptable.
It might not get him fired in 2021, but if we do play football in the fall or the coming spring, Clay Helton can’t be mediocre if he wants a long-term future at USC.
This is what happens when Alabama and Notre Dame get removed from a schedule by a remarkable series of events.