Southern California's Clay Helton expecting to contend despite losses and low expectations

George Schroeder | USA TODAY

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LOS ANGELES – The last few months, Clay Helton has been having a recurring bad dream. He keeps waking up about 3 a.m. and thinking he’s back in Pullman, Washington, late on a Friday night last September.

There’s 1:49 left on the clock. Southern California trails Washington State by three points. And the worst part is, he knows how the nightmare ends.

“It haunts me,” the Trojans coach says of that experience with Pac-12 After Dark — and with good reason.

USC lost 30-27. Coupled with a defeat a month later to Notre Dame, it kept the Trojans out of contention for the College Football Playoff. And it kept the ultimate questions about the program’s long-term stature simmering on the front burner.

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In two full seasons since his elevation from interim head coach, Helton has led USC to 21 victories, a Rose Bowl victory and a Pac-12 championship. Last winter, he was rewarded with a contract extension through 2023. And yet the sense of permanence about his tenure hasn’t yet settled in, partly because expectations for the Trojans are annually much higher.

To his credit, Helton doesn’t shy away from them.

“As nice as the Rose Bowl was, as nice as the Pac-12 championship was,” he says, “USC is about winning national championships. That needs to be our next step.”

And he adds: “I feel like we’re that close, to be honest with you.”

At least externally, that doesn’t seem like where they’re headed in 2018. A quick snapshot: Last week, in the annual preseason media poll conducted by the Pac-12, Washington was the runaway pick to win the conference championship with 37 votes. USC got two.

Yeah, we know. There aren’t many things less meaningful than a preseason prediction. Worse, it’s a survey of the media (and as the Pac-12 noted, those reporters have correctly tabbed the champion only three times in the previous 11 years). Valid points. And it’s a reflection of USC’s quarterback situation: After Sam Darnold went No. 3 overall in the NFL draft, the only certainty is the guy who starts against UNLV on Sept. 1 will have very little experience.

But USC should get 15 first-place votes because it’s USC.

Likewise, it’s more than a little jarring to see the Trojans ranked No. 15 in the preseason Amway Coaches Poll by USA TODAY Sports.

Helton says he likes this team.

No, back up.

“This is one of my favorite teams,” he says, before they’ve played or even practiced, and here’s why:

“It’s a bonded and unified team,” he says. “And there’s not like a bunch of marquee names now — there will be by the end of the seasons — but it’s a bunch of guys who have a chip on their shoulder to make a name for themselves and to leave a legacy here.”

The defense could be very good. Offensively, in addition to Darnold, the offense must replace leading rusher Ronald Jones II and a couple of very talented receivers. But the Trojans have running backs and receivers, and the bulk of the offensive line returns.

The most closely watched question of preseason is: Who wins the quarterback competition between sophomore Matt Fink, redshirt freshman Jack Sears and incoming freshman J.T. Daniels? Only Fink has played, and he’s thrown only nine passes. Most of the buzz is about Daniels, the latest USC quarterback from Southern California powerhouse Mater Dei, who skipped his senior high-school year to start college a year earlier – and could start right away.

Helton says he’ll take the entire preseason to choose. The plan is to name a starter a week before the season opener. The hope is he becomes the latest matinee idol.

“If the quarterback is effective, it’s OK to lie in the weeds and just do your job,” Helton says. “Keep winning games and look up and add them all up at the end of the year.”

Which brings us back to Helton’s recurring nightmare, and the implication that the loss kept USC out of the Playoff field. He might be right – we’ll never know – but the 49-14 loss at Notre Dame last October was probably at least as damaging in the eyes of the selection committee. Maybe moreso. Regardless, the losses combined to create a situation in which the Pac-12 champion was not a factor in the committee’s deliberations over which teams should be included in the four-team bracket.

The infrastructure to win it all remains in place, of course. USC is one of the sport’s biggest brands, sitting smack in the middle of one of its most fertile recruiting hotbeds. And the Trojans’ success in Helton’s first two seasons has helped to produce consistently solid recruiting classes. But if it’s even possible, the pressure might have ratcheted up a notch when UCLA hired Chip Kelly.

USC occupies a position – traditionally and currently – that casts a significant shadow over its crosstown rival. That hasn’t changed. But conditions on the ground might have.

Neither coach fits the mold as an LA celebrity, a la Pete Carroll when he had the Trojans rolling in the mid-2000s. But while Kelly hides from the spotlight, he draws plenty of attention because of his 46-7 record in four seasons at Oregon, his high-profile NFL coaching gigs – and his status as a home-run hire in the last coaching carousel; he could have had any of several jobs but chose UCLA.

Helton is understated, low-key, the kind of guy you could have dinner with – and if you ate at his favorite restaurant, Rock’N Fish at LA Live, it’s very possible no one would notice he was there.

That might be a feature rather than a bug. With his steady and unassuming ways, Helton was a welcome change from the boisterous brashness of Lane Kiffin and the personal meltdown of Steve Sarkisian. Both of those hires were blatant attempts to recapture Carroll’s aura – and his era – with his former offensive coordinators. Under Helton’s leadership,

Helton, by contrast, was a career assistant who spent 10 years at Memphis before coming to USC with Kiffin. He’s the son of a coach who values grinding more than glitz. Under his watch, the adults are back in charge. But the Trojans have not returned to that lofty standard.

Not quite, Helton reminds us. Not yet, he adds. As he begins his third full season as coach, with plenty of questions to answer during preseason practices and no certain answers, he recalls something his father, longtime college coach Kim Helton, reminded him not long ago.

“We won the Rose Bowl (in) Year 1, we won the Pac-12 (in) Year 2,” Clay Helton says. “But as my daddy said, ‘Nice job – but remember what your ultimate job is there: To win national championship and to contend for national championships on a consistent basis.’”

It’s more than just a goal. It’s an imperative.

“That,” Helton says, “is what ‘SC’ is.”