Clay Helton Hired as New Georgia Southern Head Coach After USC Firing

Georgia Southern hired former USC coach Clay Helton as its new head football coach Tuesday.

Helton agreed to a five-year contract worth nearly $800,000 per year, according to Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports. 

Matt Zenitz of On3 Sports previously reported that Helton was a candidate for the job.

Helton was fired by USC in September after a 1-1 start to the season.

USC named Helton its full-time head coach during the 2015 season, and he spent parts of eight seasons as the head coach of the Trojans, including one game as interim head coach in 2013.

Helton became the interim head coach again in place of Steve Sarkisian and ultimately had the interim tag removed. It initially seemed like a good decision, as USC won double-digit games in back-to-back seasons, going 10-3 in 2016 and 11-3 in 2017.

USC dropped to 5-7 the following season, however, and never won more than eight games in a single season again under Helton.

All told, the Trojans went 46-24 during Helton's tenure, winning one Pac-12 title and going 2-3 in bowl games, including a win in the 2017 Rose Bowl over Penn State.

Georgia Southern became an FBS program in 2014 and has enjoyed a great deal of success in the Sun Belt Conference, posting five winning seasons in seven tries and going 3-1 in bowl games.

Chad Lunsford spent parts of four seasons as the Eagles head coach, leading them to a school-record 10 wins as an FBS program in 2018. They followed that up with winning records and bowl appearances in each of the past two seasons as well.

Lunsford was fired after a 1-3 start this season, though, and the Eagles are just 2-6 overall this season and on pace for their worst record since going 2-10 in 2017.

Helton had no head coaching experience before his time at USC, and he has not coached anywhere other than USC since he was an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Memphis in 2009.

In Helton, Georgia Southern is landing someone with big-time head coaching experience and the ability to attract some high-level recruits to a smaller school.