The USC football team plane landed Sunday morning around 2. Clay Helton allowed himself a trip home to shower before arriving at the McKay Center in the dewy darkness. The film and the truths that it always held awaited him in his office. He would watch all three games of this frustrating, confusing season, hoping to find some answers as to how another opportunity for a big win so emphatically slipped through the Trojans’ fingers the night before at Texas.
To Helton, this wasn’t a painful process. Long nights and early mornings with the clicker in his hand are part of why he has relished being a football coach for more than half his life, why he followed his father, Kim, into this crazy profession.