No, USC can’t just fire Clay Helton as coach

After a blowout loss to Notre Dame, head coach Clay Helton finds himself back on a warming pad at USC. But firing him would be the easy way out.

For the second time in two seasons, Clay Helton’s USC Trojans were embarrassed on national television, losing to Notre Dame 49-14 Saturday night.

It was the culmination of a Jekyll and Hyde start to 2017, in which Troy looked both inept and brilliant, depending on the quarter.

In South Bend, they were simply bad.

Turnovers, yet again, doomed an offense constantly idling instead of reaching a fifth gear it’s surely capable of. And defensively, a potpourri of abysmal tackling and an injury riddled third-string line led to the Irish amassing 377 rushing yards.

Everything that could’ve gone awry did. And for the first time all year, neither side of the ball could muster enough consistency to cover for the other.

It was just bad.

Bad enough to re-evoke the feelings of last September, when Clay Helton didn’t look like a head coach worthy of leading an FBS team.

Now, with hindsight, growth and a bigger picture, bad just means a more tenable yet inconvenient truth. Helton is probably not the right man to lead USC to a national championship.

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Despite showing glimpses of stellar play —mainly stretches against Stanford and Utah— his Trojans haven’t displayed consistency to reach their ultimate potential.

They’ve relied on the peaks of Sam Darnold to make up for the valleys of Sam Darnold. They’ve banked on character to overcome the adversity of self-inflicted miscues.

None of it reflects well on Helton and his staff when the duality of good and bad is repeated over and over again. Omit the good stuff for a night against a team as seemingly stout as Notre Dame, and its a damning indictment.

But despite the apparent ceiling, USC is in a position where they have to stay the course.

Even with calls from ranting fans and message board tirades, athletic director Lynn Swann cannot fire Clay Helton anytime soon.

Terminating a third coach in five seasons, regardless of cause, would only continue to do undue harm to a program still needing stability.

And in a practical sense, it goes beyond that. What caliber of college football coach would willingly sign up for a job where winning a Rose Bowl in Year 1 isn’t good enough by Year 2?

Who would want to be in charge of a program with expectations so ridiculous that a 15-2 run could find you on the chopping block regardless of context?

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USC made its bed by having on-the-way-out Pat Haden hire an unproven assistant in the most drawn-out hastily made hire of all-time.

They now have to lay in it, hoping for the best.

Maybe that means the Trojans pick up the pieces and win the Pac-12 South —if not the whole conference— as once expected. Maybe it means they find themselves back in a purgatory known as the Holiday Bowl.

Either way, Helton is what Helton has shown. He’s a coach good enough to have talent-laden USC compete at the top of the conference, while not consistently evoking play at the highest level.

That’s good enough for most schools. It’ll have to be good enough for USC.