Will USC fire Clay Helton or did he do enough to save his job?

On the hot seat all season, with plenty of speculation over who will replace him, has Clay Helton saved his job at USC?

After the program’s worst season since 2000 last year, it was a fairly surprising Clay Helton kept his job as USC football coach when then-athletic director Lynn Swann made the announcement. The heat has turned up on Helton at times this season, with Urban Meyer the most hotly rumored candidate to step in.

The rivalry doesn’t have the juice it used to, but the Trojans’ 52-35 win over UCLA on Saturday still means something. The regular season is now over for USC, with a three-game winning streak and winners of five of their last six to finish at 8-4 and await a bowl assignment. They are 7-2 in conference play and can still win the Pac-12 South if Utah (6-1 in Pac-12 play) loses one of their final two games. USC beat the No. 7-ranked Utes back in September, so they own the head-to-head tie-breaker.

New USC athletic director Mike Bohn would not reveal a timetable for a decision on Helton’s future, in the name of not jeopardizing momentum or “opportunities that exist.” Those opportunities include, at least pending Utah’s result against Arizona Saturday night, going to the Pac-12 title game and winning it. Either one of those events would make it hard, if not outright impossible, to make a coaching change.

The thing that may make it the hardest, however, is the $20 million buyout Helton would receive if USC decided to fire him and start over again.

In four full seasons as head coach of the Trojans, Helton has gone 10-3, 11-3, 5-7 and now at least 8-4 with a 31-12 mark in Pac-12 play. There may be lingering national title aspirations in place at USC, as a residue of the Pete Carroll era, but Helton has been to a Rose Bowl and a Cotton Bowl with another upper-tier bowl bid still in play this year.

If Bohn wants a football coach with a certain level of novelty and cache’, Helton is never going to be that guy. But with 2018 looking like something of an outlier, it’s hard to fire a coach who has won 72 percent of his conference games and nearly two-thirds of his games overall.

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