USC football mercifully fired Clay Helton and now there’s only one head coach to replace him who can save and fix the once-proud Trojans: Urban Meyer.
Though it’s felt inevitable for some time, a 42-28 loss to Stanford in Week 2 of the 2021 season proved to be the final straw for USC football and their patience with head coach Clay Helton. On Monday, the school’s athletic director Mike Bohn released a statement saying that he’d notified Helton that he’d been let go from the program.
Now, one of the most storied jobs in college football is open once again. And the Trojans brass has the immense responsibility of filling that void adequately. One name that is going to come up is current Jacksonville Jaguars and former Florida and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer. That’s only going to be fueled by the fact that his first season in the NFL has basically gone poorly from Jump Street.
While USC football hiring Urban Meyer might seem like a pie-in-the-sky notion, the fact of the matter is that the three-time National Championship-winning coach is the only man who can bring the Trojans back to their former glory. There are several reasons why that’s the case.
5. Anything other than Urban Meyer will be a disappointment for USC football
This isn’t to say that anyone who isn’t Meyer will disappoint in results. Frankly, there are numerous coaches throughout college football who could take over the Trojans program and get them back on track as a program. But in terms of expectations and fan perception, it’s going to be hard to get past Meyer.
Throughout the previous coaching search and even amid Helton’s struggle at the forefront of USC football, Meyer was always one of the top candidates mentioned for the job. It seemed to be a match made in heaven given his pedigree and the cornucopia of possibilities present with this program in the right hands.
Of course, that never materialized. But with the chips falling as they are, namely, Helton getting fired as Meyer is getting baptized by fire in the NFL where it seems as if he might be in over his head, the talk is going to heat up once again and fans are going to get their hopes up.
The results of that are, if USC were to miss out on Urban Meyer once again, they would be setting whoever does replace Helton up for failure. Fans would comparing that coach to “what Meyer could’ve done” and so on from the moment he sits down at his desk. That’s not a positive situation and it’s one that simply landing Meyer this time around could help them avoid.