T-Time: Here’s who USC won’t hire as coach
New athletic director Mike Bohn is officially on the clock, and that’s bad news for head football coach Clay Helton. Unless the first quarter of the Arizona State game was the only USC football Bohn has ever seen — in that case, brace yourself for a five-year extension.
Since the BYU loss, fans have speculated over USC’s next head coaching hire. Most are clamoring for Urban Meyer to ride in on his white horse, win a few national championships and retreat to CBS Sports when things inevitably go south. This would give him the coveted three rings at three different schools and three retirements at three different broadcast networks (college football’s version of the EGOT).
Others wanted Bohn to roll the dice and row the boat by hiring Minnesota’s P.J. Fleck, who at the very least would turn stale press conferences into Disney Plus-level premium content (though it has been nice being able to copy and paste Helton’s phrases from week to week). But any chance of that ended when Fleck signed a contract extension last week that will keep him in the Twin Cities through 2026.
A lot is up in the air, but one thing is certain: No one knows anything yet, and it’s causing the fanbase to lose its collective mind.
The other day, I was scouring Twitter for any new information on the head coaching search, and I came across this gem from a USC fan, in response to beat writer Alica de Artola, who was trying to curtail fan expectations.
“But Alicia, USC was THIS CLOSE to digging up the remains of Howard Jones, re-animating him and surrounding him with a staff from the SEC West,” tweets user kingcambie. “It was going to happen!”
Special thanks to the king of cambie for inspiring me to come up with this list of the most unlikely candidates to replace Helton. I can’t tell you who USC will hire, but perhaps ruling out a few names will end those recurring nightmares of Jeff Fisher leading the team out of the Coliseum tunnel. Here we go.
Florida Atlantic head coach Lane Kiffin
Every time my dad calls me, he asks me who I think USC’s next head coach will be. Every time, I tell him I don’t know. And every time he responds, “You’re bringing back Lane Kiffin.”
First of all, Dad, if you already have the answer, then why are you asking me? And second of all, please stop. Florida Atlantic has put up a solid 23-13 record during Kiffin’s tenure, but he’s shown no signs of maturing from when he called for a 76-yard field goal as the Raiders’ head coach. He still tweets more than his own players and burns bridges at every stop.
Let’s leave this idea on the tarmac once and for all.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll
Why’d he have to go, I don’t know, he wouldn’t say / Reggie did something [not even really] wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Unless quarterback Russell Wilson abruptly retires to be a stay-at-home dad or Amazon buys out the Seahawks and outsources their coaching to Bangladesh, this isn’t happening. But USC fans can keep dreaming. To cope, I usually watch the first hour of ESPN 30 for 30’s “Trojan War” and drift off to sleep before the NCAA intervenes.
The only silver lining is that, at age 68, Carroll is youthful enough to coach into his mid-90s. Maybe he’ll come back around 2040, but don’t even count on that.
LSU head coach Ed Orgeron
USC had its chance to give Orgeron the keys to the program back in 2013 when he led the team to a 6-2 finish as interim head coach. During Orgeron’s run, which included an upset over No. 4 Stanford, then-athletic director Pat Haden said, “I had 136 pro-Coach O emails today. Those were just emails. That doesn’t count the tweets, letters and phone calls. In my day, they sent ‘em by carrier pigeon. Now, I get ‘em four or five ways.”
And yet he ignored all of those messages — through all four or five ways they were delivered — and hired Steve Sarkisian, who, um, wasn’t really head coach material. Now Orgeron is the head coach of LSU, a job the Louisiana-born part-man-mostly-alligator was put on this earth to do. Since taking over, the Tigers have gone 28-7 and just took down No. 2 Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium over the weekend. I’d be more upset about it, but it’s hard to argue with destiny. Orgeron will be coaching the Tiguhs until the bayou dries up and Haden’s decision remains one of USC’s worst in recent history, which says a lot.
Former Rams coach Jeff Fisher
Just no. The last season Fisher led a team at the Coliseum, it finished 4-12 even though that same team had enough talent to make the Super Bowl two years later. Fisher can rest easy knowing he’ll forever go down in history … as the losingest coach in NFL history (tied with Dan Reeves at 165 losses). Fisher will be name-dropped in every USC head coaching search until the end of time, all because he played for the Trojans in the early 1980s (The Trojan Family is real! Fight On!). At least it’s impossible to go 7-9 in college football, if USC does somehow end up with Fisher.
The John McKay statue outside of the John McKay Center
Honestly, why not? He’s a steady presence. He has the most wins in USC history (127). He understands the program by virtue of constantly lingering around. Give the man his job back.
Trevor Denton is a senior writing about sports. He is also a former sports editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “T-Time,” runs every other Thursday.