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.
4. No other USC football coaching candidate has the pedigree of Urban Meyer
In the wake of Clay Helton being ousted, Yahoo!’s Pete Thamel released a preliminary list of possible replacements for USC football.
That list included the following 10 head coaching candidates: James Franklin (Penn State), Matt Campbell (Iowa State), Bill O’Brien (Alabama offensive coordinator), Luke Fickell (Cincinnati), P.J. Fleck (Minnesota), Mario Cristobal (Oregon), Greg Schiano (Rutgers), Tony Elliott (Clemson offensive coordinator), Chris Petersen (formerly Washington, Boise State), and Bob Stoops (formerly Oklahoma).
If you’ll notice anything about that list of candidates, only one of them (Stoops) has a National Championship on his résumé. Yes, they all have track records of program building, winning and so on, but Bohn said flat out in his statement that USC football was aimed at winning titles and none of those potential candidates have done that. Urban Meyer has — and he’s done it three times.
Everywhere Meyer has been, he’s produced extreme levels of success. He went 22-2 in two seasons at Utah, 65-15 over six years at Florida with two SEC and National Championships, and 83-9 over seven years at Ohio State with three Big Ten titles, a National Championship and only one year not in a New Year’s Six bowl.
This isn’t a head coach who’s all sizzle and no steak; Urban Meyer has produced results at the highest level. And for as good as the other candidates are, no one is in the ballpark of what Meyer has accomplished.
3. Urban Meyer understands the aura of being the USC football head coach
USC football isn’t any job. In fact, you could make a strong argument that being in charge of this program is unlike anywhere else in the country, or at least a bigger deal than being the head coach of Ohio State or Florida, as prestigious as those gigs are in their own right. And that’s something that can’t be taken for granted.
But it’s also something that Urban Meyer wholly understands about the situation. Back in 2019 when Helton was first starting to get true rumblings that he could be fired from his post, radio host Colin Cowherd continued on his crusade to downgrade the Trojans program. And at the time, he said the program was more “glamour than great”.
Meyer responded to those comments, however, and spoke exceptionally highly of the program. He even went as far as to say that the head coach of the Trojans was “an elite, elite job”. That’s someone who respects the job and knows this isn’t just another payday in the spotlight to take lightly.
Sure, anyone vying for a job like USC would say the same thing but Meyer has been to the mountaintop time and again — he has no real reason to B.S. around the situation. If he thinks a job is elite, it’s more than likely that he means it. And the Trojans always need someone who understands and respects the fact that being the head coach isn’t just any old job.
2. USC football needs the recruiting prowess of Urban Meyer
This past season was actually a big-time bounce-back year in recruiting for USC. Bringing in a class headlined by Korey Foreman, the No. 2-ranked overall player, the Trojans ranked seventh nationally in terms of their recruiting class. But that overshadows the larger problem of recruiting under Clay Helton.
The ultimate low undoubtedly came in 2020 when USC football had the 64th ranked recruiting class in the country and the 12th-ranked class in the Pac-12. That’s simply unacceptable for a program of this caliber. However, it also doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Trojans hadn’t been the top recruiting class in the conference since 2018, a class that featured 5-star quarterback JT Daniels, who is obviously now at Georgia.
Urban Meyer is one of the greatest quarterbacks in college football history — no hyperbole. His 2010 recruiting class at Florida is considered one of the best ever in the sport but he was also consistent. He had seven recruiting classes at Ohio State and was never outdone by a team in the Big Ten. Furthermore, his average rank of recruiting classes from 2007-18 was 3.66 nationally.
Not only is he proven as a recruiter, but he always retained the best in-state talent at Florida and Ohio State. For the hotbed in Southern California, that’s absolutely pivotal to the sustained success of the Trojans and something Meyer has proven he can do.
1. Urban Meyer can develop players in a way USC football has lacked
One of the biggest gripes about Clay Helton as a head coach has been how subpar the player development has been. Even when the Trojans have been able to secure top-10 recruiting classes, too often those players have not lived up to their pedigrees and, frankly, have played a part in the disappointment for USC.
While Meyer is no stranger, as mentioned, to recruiting among the best programs in the country, his ability to mold and develop those players has been phenomenal as well. That certainly goes back to his days of burgeoning stardom in the coaching ranks at Utah when he led the Utes to unprecedented levels of success but continued at Florida and Ohio State as well.
Perhaps the most recent example of this was quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who led the Buckeyes in his final season in Columbus in 2018. Haskins was only a 4-star prospect and the No. 7 pro-style quarterback in the 2016 class, nor did he fit the traditional mobile mold of previous quarterbacks with the program under Meyer. So all he did was throw for 4,831 yards and 50 touchdowns to get named a Heisman finalist.
That’s just one of many examples of Meyer taking a talented player and putting him in the best position to succeed and cultivating the tools that could make someone a college football star. USC football has been lacking that but hiring Urban Meyer would bring tha back to the forefront.
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