The Hotline cannot claim any insider knowledge pertaining to the future of USC coach Clay Helton.
We have our suspicions, based on published reports and discussions with conference and USC sources. But we don’t know.
The presence of a new university president, Carol Folt, and an ineffective athletic director on fragile ground, Lynn Swann, complicates the Helton calculation.
But of this we are quite confident:
The Trojans must either surge or stink in September — the middle ground, purgatory, is the worst path possible.
If they surge, Helton would seemingly secure his job through the fall.