Embarrassing Start to Season Fueled USC Resurgence and Changed Its Future

PASADENA, Calif. — At some point, probably soon, USC will go back to being Hollywood again. That's OK. It can't help it, not in its L.A. surroundings, not with its fans in a place that idolizes its stars. For years, USC had been stuck in a phony place.

And now, instead of a coach with flowing silver hair (Pete Carroll) and movie-star looks, the Trojans have a bald guy with a belly named Clay Helton, who stopped on his way to talk to all the TV cameras Monday so he could high-five pretty much every member of the marching band as it walked past the USC locker room. Helton looked like he could have grabbed a tuba and started playing.

Instead, he got in a golf cart to the postgame press conference to talk. USC had just beat Penn State 52-49 in the Rose Bowl on a last-second field goal in the most exhilarating game of the bowl season. Just a few months ago, after the Trojans lost three of their first four games, including an embarrassing prime-time blowout to Alabama, USC nation wanted Helton fired—mostly because no one really wanted him in the first place. He was not splashy enough. And now, the Trojans will likely finish the year ranked No. 3 in the nation. Maybe No. 2.

USC is USC again, at least in being a top program. Just like that, through nearly a decade of scandal and coaching changes and failures, and even a 46-point loss to Alabama to start this very season, USC is going to be a national championship contender next year.

Not a highly ranked team looking to fall, as it has been for years. But a real, honest-to-goodness team that could—even should—get to the College Football Playoff. Quarterback Sam Darnold, who has almost nothing to say, wasn't starting at the beginning of the year. On Monday, he threw for 453 yards and five touchdowns.

Next year, he comes back. As a sophomore.

"I love the quiet confidence about him," Helton said. "You never saw his demeanor change tonight. Whether he was throwing a touchdown or whether we got stopped on offense, you just never saw his demeanor change. He was so glued in and so focused."

Helton described the game as "what fairy tales are made of."

The truth is, the fairy tale ended. That's the reason why Helton and Darnold were able to turn this thing around.

That humiliating loss to Alabama, which knows how to put real bruises on just about everyone, knocked Team Hollywood into reality.

"It definitely humbled us for a reason," offensive lineman Viane Talamaivao said. "Losses like that don't just happen. They are blessings in disguise."

Here is a theory: USC comes into every year thinking it's loaded with athleticism and talent. But deep down, it never really believes. And Alabama put such a devastating beating on the Trojans that they didn't have any excuses they could rely on.

They had bottomed out. And there was no way to believe in their hype anymore.

They had really become that bad of a team. Three players told me they had lost their confidence entirely. The magic of Helton is that somehow he got the players to believe in him. After the loss to Alabama, there were more losses, too, to Stanford and Utah.

"[We] sat down with the kids and told them, 'Hey, guys, if you continue to compete the way you're competing, trust the process, eliminate the mistakes, you're going to look up come November and you're going to be really, really happy because you're going to have made a run and you're going to be playing your best football."

Penn State had to go through a similar process. Just a few years ago, it had the Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno scandal that could have buried the program for decades. The Nittany Lions also went through multiple coaches, and it was only a few months ago that head coach James Franklin came across to fans as a used car salesman.

They leave the season as Big Ten champs with a running back, Saquon Barkley, who will be an early Heisman Trophy favorite next year and a stud at quarterback in Trace McSorley.

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Penn State is back, and USC is back, and it seemed right somehow that these two traditional programs would play each other in a game with so much tradition and history.

This was USC's 34th Rose Bowl, but it hadn't been in one since 2009 under Carroll. He was the hero of Team Hollywood, giving the fans exactly what they dream of.

They ignore that he left the program in probation and with a shortage of players. Lane Kiffin replaced him, and that didn't go well. I once came out to talk with Kiffin in his office, and he strolled to a little outdoor lounge area in shorts and flip-flops and said how tough it was to follow Carroll's super-cool show.

Well, USC fired Kiffin, and instead of going with Helton, it went with Ed Orgeron, who left. And then Helton coached a bowl game and wasn't given the job again until after Steve Sarkisian had a short, embarrassing run.

It's funny now to think of how hard USC tried to not hire Helton. And how patient he was.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

"I think a guy like Sam Darnold and Clay Helton will walk hand-in-hand," USC athletics director Lynn Swann said. "A first-year quarterback and a first-year coach, and they can grow together."

Darnold wasn't even the starter until Game 4. And at just 19 years old, he already has incredible touch, confidence, aggressiveness. He is not just the typical USC golden-boy quarterback who looks great in the pocket. He scrambles around, senses his surroundings and might throw in an ugly jump pass out of necessity now and then.

The future is right again for Darnold. And it's going to be sad if he and Helton become Hollywood stars someday. It will be offered to them. It always is at USC.

But for now, the hero is a pudgy bald guy who high-fives tuba players.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @gregcouch.