The University of Southern California is home to one of collegiate football’s winningest programs, winning 11 national championships over its 132-year history. USC football has developed a culture that is no stranger to success. Over the years, USC has recruited and produced some of the NFL’s finest with 13 Pro Football Hall of Famers. The Trojans have sent 526 players to the NFL, including six Heisman trophy winners. However, USC’s historic success on the field has been shadowed by the scandals that have plagued the university over the past few years.
Off the field, USC’s athletic department was at the center of the national media’s coverage of the Varsity Blues scandal. The university’s administration conducted a vast upheaval inside of the athletic department, releasing numerous figureheads such as athletic director Lynn Swann, COO/CFO Steve Lopes, Trojan Athletic Fund senior associate athletic director Ron Orr and associate athletic director Scott Jacobson.
On the field, USC has not lived up to its national championship-winning past, failing to compete for the title since its 2006 loss against the University of Texas. Current head coach Clay Helton has consistently struggled to win the respect of USC’s fanbase with a record of 40 wins and 21 losses over his four-year tenure as head coach. The fans and media seem to call for an immediate replacement week after week.
Under the guidance of president Carol Folt and new athletic director Mike Bohn, USC’s athletic department is working together to repair the football program’s damaged reputation and help return the team to the national championship game. To achieve this goal, USC’s football program requires strong coaching, world-class recruiting and facilities, excellent student-athlete academic support services, and, most importantly, a winning culture.
Culture
“It’s all about the culture of the football program, as in the standard held by the head coach [and] the coaching staff in every facet of the program,” said Spencer Harris, USC Football’s Director of Player Personnel.
When you enter the facility of a football team, the culture or lack thereof is usually apparent. Brandon Campbell, one of USC’s newest and highest-rated recruits out of Katy, Texas, believes that the culture the new staff at USC has created is one of the main reasons that he chose to commit.
“The culture is everything. I mean, that’s what wins championships. We talk about offense, we talk about defense, those change year in, year out…But the thing that stays consistent…in a football program, or any organization, is its culture,” said Mike Jinks, USC’s running back’s coach.
So, what exactly is USC Football’s culture? Set by head coach Clay Helton, USC Football proclaims everything is in some way connected to three pillars – faith, family, and football.
The first time he met coach Helton, Jordan Iosefa, now a senior captain on USC’s football team, felt an energy unlike any he had ever experienced.
“Coach Helton was very upfront about his three main beliefs for what the team should be about. You have faith – that’s your faith in both your teammates and your religion,” Iosefa said. “Family is about the brotherhood of the team and the bonds you form. Finally, you have football, and that really explains itself.”
As a Nike school, USC receives team-issued gear each week. The coaches and players walk around the facility in the gear, which is now all emblazoned with the team’s motto, to remind them of their three pillars.
Steve Murillo, an Offensive Quality Control Analyst at USC, believes faith, family, and football, “lay the foundation of what the expectations are of the team [and] of the program.”
Mike Bohn, USC’s Athletic Director, is a supporter of Clay Helton’s culture and his three pillars, but he knows there is more to the culture than just faith, family, and football.
“I think our culture in the football program is one of tremendous hope, and I think it’s one of tremendous pride. I believe it’s one of a sense of commitment to the institution and to longstanding history that we’ve had here.” Bohn says, “It’s important to have the same vision, the same chemistry and commitment to each other, and the same goals and everybody buying in on that.”
Coaching
Following a disappointing 2018 season where the Trojans finished 5 and 7, fans called for the firing of Helton, and the hiring of a new head coach that would return USC to the wins it experienced under Pete Carroll’s 9-year regime. On December 5, 2019, less than a month after starting as USC’s athletic director, Bohn announced he would be retaining Helton for the 2020 football season, which shocked the Trojan Family. Bohn believes that if he provides Helton with the necessary tools, USC will once again have a national championship-caliber team.
According to Bohn, Helton is on the right path. Following the 2019 football season, Helton released a multitude of coaches – Clancy Pendergast, his defensive coordinator of four years, and John Baxter, his special team’s coach of four years, as well as multiple position coaches, such as linebackers coach Joe DeForest and defensive backs coach Greg Burns. There was a cloud of uncertainty hanging over USC’s football facility, the John McKay Center, as fans and the media questioned the football program’s belief that elite coaches from around the country would want to come coach for such an embattled program. However, using the tools provided by Bohn, Helton pulled together a world-class coaching staff that has momentarily silenced critics.
Todd Orlando, the University of Texas’ defensive coordinator, was the first coach Helton hired on January 24. He brought with him a physical mentality that players have instantly come to fear. At the first recruiting event held by the new coaching staff in February, recruits noted Orlando’s energy and excitement.
Jordan Iosefa recalls his first practice with coach Orlando.
“He was running up and down the field, yelling, making sure we were ready before each snap, and even coaching us during the middle of a play. Honestly, it was a huge change from last year, but it’s the type of leadership we need – that tough and physical mentality – that will get us to the national championship.”
While Helton’s other hires have been welcomed by both the players and the fans, one hire has garnered more media attention than the rest. Donte Williams, the defensive backs coach from the University of Oregon, is widely known for not only coaching some of the best players in college football, but also for his ability to recruit the best high school athletes around the country. Highly sought after, both the fans and media alike praised Helton’s hire of Williams.
Bohn cites the Williams and Orlando hire when he explains his decision to retain Helton.
“I think that all you have to do is look at the success that he’s had with the coaches that he’s assembled to put this team together,” said Bohn, “when you understand that he had the ability to pull all those people together in those challenging times, I think it says a lot about him as a person, as a leader, as a coach, and it validates him in a big, big way.”
Recruiting and Facilities
Although countless high school athletes around the world want to play for USC, Harris explains that scholarships are offered only to those players that will thrive under the team’s culture.
High school athletes looking to compete at the collegiate level are ranked by multiple analysts from one to five stars based on their on-field performance during high school games, college camps, and seven-on-seven tournaments. USC has a history of signing the best four-star and five-star recruits nationwide. According to 24/7 Sports, from 2003 to 2018, USC’s recruiting class averaged fourth-best in the country. However, in 2019, USC ranked 19th, and its 2020 class ranked 55th in the country.
Since 2001, USC successfully recruited star quarterbacks, Matt Leinert, Matt Barkley, and JT Daniels, from Mater Dei High School, a 35-minute drive from the campus. In July 2018, Bryce Young, a 5-star recruit from Mater Dei, as well as the nation’s number two dual-threat quarterback, followed his predecessors’ footsteps and committed to USC. For more than a year, Young helped recruit high school athletes around the country to commit to the Trojans. In an unforeseen turn of events, on September 22, 2019, Young announced he was changing his commitment from USC to the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Lawrence Jackson, a defensive end for legendary head coach Pete Carroll, played for the Trojans from 2004-2007, struggles to understand why high school athletes from California choose to leave their home state to play for other universities.
“If you’re so good, why don’t you come here and compete for a job and help restore the glory?… It ain’t about what USC can do for you. It’s about what you can do for USC,” said Jackson. “So, all the ballers out there, they think they’re good going to other schools and stuff, it doesn’t matter if you win a national championship [elsewhere] if you’re living in California. You win the national championship at USC and you go pro and come back home, you always got a home.”
With schools in the south turning their attention and their large recruiting budgets to the west coast, USC now has a larger base to compete with. Historically, southern schools recruited largely out of their supposed mecca of football, but with the rise of social media, every recruit is fair game.
Twitter has become the primary recruiting hub for high school football coaches. Constant contact with recruits is necessary to secure their commitment, as well as to provide them with fancy graphics and videos for their social media presence.
Those with perhaps a more traditional point of view would point out the traditions and long-term success of a school, and not the money spent on wooing recruits.
“Why wouldn’t you choose USC? I believe we provide [an experience] that is completely unique and exceeds our competition. Look at our proven history, Heisman trophies, NFL players,” said Bohn. “Playing in what I believe is the most iconic stadium in the country, in the country’s finest city for sports, and the ability to take all the equity associated with USC academically, athletically, socially, and build that into your own brand is invaluable.”
Academic Support
In 2012, USC opened the John McKay Center. The $70 million, 110,000 square foot facility features an indoor football field, an academic support center for student-athletes, training rooms, locker rooms, student lounges, and nutrition centers. The McKay Center serves as a testament to USC’s commitment to sustaining a world-class football program.
Other schools are building bigger and more modern facilities, many of which include impressive gimmicks to attract recruits. Referencing Clemson’s football facility’s two-story slide and Alabama’s football facility’s waterfall, Murillo says, “A lot of the schools are building all this and all that. It’s all more of a show… you can have a slide, you can have a waterfall, you can have this and all that, but if you don’t have the guys that are going to help you build your character, your program, into a successful one, then what’s the point of having all that stuff?”
USC has updated the facilities in order to attempt to keep up in the arms race that is the current world of college football facilities. TVs, recliners, an indoor basketball game, and other amenities have been added to the player’s lounge. Over 50 small TVs hang in the lobby of the John McKay Center to form a large TV that is hooked up to a gaming system, where players can challenge other teammates to a game on the Xbox or PlayStation.
However, USC instead centers its recruiting strategy on the school’s academic prestige, selling both parents and recruits on the value of a USC degree.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to the people in the facility and the relationships with the players, relationships with students and how they develop,” said Murillo.
The men and women working inside the McKay Center ensure USC’s student-athletes are able to compete not only on the field but also off the field as well. A significant focus of the Center, according to Hatcher Parnell, USC’s Director of Game Management, is not just on football.
“I think that the biggest thing it brought is much broader than the football program. It’s the academic side,” said Parnell. “More than a third of that building is academics.”
To Mimi Butler, USC’s Director of Athletic Academic Support, the John McKay Center, “is our house, this is our home.” The layout of the Stevens Academic Center inside of the John McKay Center helps Butler organize all of her support staff. Proudly, Butler explains that, “all of our tutoring, all of our academic support takes place here…all of our learning specialists have their individual offices, and then we have our own small computer lab, and we can offer a lot of one-on-one tutoring out in the general area. Then they can go to the other side where we have the tutorial services, and they can get content area tutoring over there.”
Butler’s dedication ensures that every single athlete on USC’s football team succeeds off the field in the classroom, so they are able to succeed on the field. In 2019, USC football’s graduation rate reached a program high for the fourth consecutive year, coming in at 82 percent. That is twenty-seven percentage points higher than it was when the NCAA first released such numbers in 2005. In 2016, USC football had a graduation rate of only 58 percent. As for the team’s GPA, in 2016, The Daily Trojan reported, “The football team recorded its highest in-season GPA ever of 2.66.”
Head coach Clay Helton claims to be implementing the necessary changes to return USC football to the national championship game. Replacing a majority of his assistant coaches within three months of the end of the 2019 season, Helton hopes to be building the staff necessary to end USC’s two-year recruiting slump. With the support of Bohn, who insists USC is invested heavily in its facilities, support staff, and services to educate and ensure the success of its student-athletes, the program waits to see the results and hopes a return to the national championship game is in the near future.