The 2017 Pac-12 regular season is over, so what have we learned? Well, some of the most compelling stuff was revealed about its coaches. We learned that, in Gary Anderson, Oregon State made one of the worst hires in recent memory. The state of Arizona has two overrated coaches who will dazzle in September, pretty much suck in Autumn and would have been fired if the desert programs had any tradition or aspirations for greatness. Jim Mora was a chap ass who failed wonderfully despite having two of the very best quarterbacks in the program’s history. Colorado’s a stranger in a strange land and any recent success was a fluke. The Mike Leach experiment is mostly over even though I appreciate a fat, sloppily-dressed coach as much as the next guy. And there’s reason for hope at Cal … not really, I just wanted to see who was paying attention.

So that leaves five schools. Chris Petersen, David Shaw and now Chip Kelly almost have to be considered elite. I believe Kyle Whittingham is pretty damn good, so the question for people who care about USC football is whether Clay Helton will ever fit into this group? The entire USC universe and everything good and holy in this life hinge on the answer to that question.

Why didn’t USC hire Chris Peterson or Chip Kelly? It’s a nuanced question that comes down to two things: USC thinks it’s smarter than everybody else and will rarely kiss the right ass and do the obvious thing even when it’s in their best interest, and second, the vast majority of coaches at all levels don’t want a job where absolute greatness is the only measurement of success. So a guy like Petersen goes to a dormant program like Washington where simple relevance is good enough and Kelly picks UCLA where expectations only exist for the basketball team.

So now football success at USC rests on finding a way to beat these guys, the guys they thought they were too smart to hire. It should have never come to this, but arrogance in the athletic department has now put the Trojans in a very dangerous situation.

Unless a miracle happens and the nicest guy in the world (Clay Helton) also turns out to be the biggest coaching badass in the world, USC is going to have a very angry fan base in 2018 because today it looks like they have been outflanked in the coaching game by the likes of Stanford, Washington and, holy fuck, UCLA!

I have my doubts about whether the Chip Kelly Oregon phenomenon can ever happen again. Much about it was a perfect storm. The style of offense and pace of play he mastered has essentially been standard fare in college football now for ten years. He’ll not be sneaking up on anybody in hideous shades of green. And it won’t be as easy to get piles and piles of academically-questionable athletes into UCLA. Still, whatever pill UCLA took to instantly grow a nut sack and to suddenly be transformed from gutty little cubs to dangerous football predators is a pill with great economic upside.

USC’s ten win season to this point is not something to scoff at. This team is not that talented and they could have gone in the tank at multiple times. They were overmatched at Notre Dame and the loss at WSU was a choke job. That they stayed the course and are now on the verge of a conference championship is a credit to Helton. But the offense lacks an identity, the team lacks an identity and it’s hard to be the “nice” guy and kick ass and take names at the same time. Should 2018 be a season without Darnold, things could get ugly real fast, especially if someone like Chip Kelly starts kicking your ass.

USC fans should be praying nightly for Clay Helton. But I have an awful feeling that a football-hiring philosophy that seems to be based on taking the path of least resistance is bound to come up woefully short. Shaw-Petersen-Kelly vs. Kiffin-Sarkisian-Helton, what’s wrong with this picture?