Clay Helton had the highest reported salary among Pac-12 coaches in 2019-20
Ryan Kartje (LA Times) — As Clay Helton clung to his job following a 5-7 season in 2018, the embattled coach’s USC salary continued to rise. During the 2019 season, he had the highest reported salary among Pac-12 football coaches, according to a federal tax return filed by the university and obtained by The Times.
Helton earned $4.813 million from USC and its related organizations from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020, an increase of more than $244,325 over the previous fiscal year, when a contract extension courtesy of previous athletic director Lynn Swann boosted his salary by more than 40%.
Helton saw a much more modest pay increase in 2019, as USC finished 8-5 and questions about his job security reached a fevered pitch. But the raise was still enough to narrowly eclipse what was previously known to be the top salary among Pac-12 football coaches.
It is unclear whether Stanford coach David Shaw was awarded a salary increase during the 2019-20 fiscal year. As private institutions, Stanford and USC are not required to disclose employee salary information. Shaw made $4.812 million in 2018, according to USA Today’s coaches salary database. His total pay in 2019 has not yet been disclosed.
Helton’s pay in 2019, according to the university tax return obtained Monday, climbed $1,635 above the Stanford coach’s 2018 earnings, previously the high-water mark for coaches in the conference. Helton’s 2019 earnings made him at least the second highest-paid coach in the conference and placed him among the top 20 highest-paid coaches in the nation that season.
USC, meanwhile, continued to stumble. After an 8-5 finish in 2019, Helton fired two coordinators and retooled most of his staff. The pandemic turned what was probably a make-or-break season into an uneven and unusual 5-0 run to the Pac-12 title game, where Oregon promptly ran USC off its own home field to steal the conference crown.
Helton still has three years remaining on his USC contract after signing an extension in February 2018, which has since been a major source of ire among frustrated Trojans fans. The extension bumped Helton’s pay from $3.2 million in 2017 to more than $4.5 million in 2018.
Helton’s built-in raise ahead of the 2019 season was much smaller than past pay increases. Helton’s $2.6-million salary in 2016 rose to $3.2 million the next year after a run to the 2017 Rose Bowl. An 11-win season and trip to the Cotton Bowl the following year was enough to convince Swann to give Helton an extension and a substantial pay raise to more than $4.5 million in 2018.
Helton’s pay may have dropped slightly in 2020, after he, basketball coach Andy Enfield, and athletic director Mike Bohn agreed in May to return a combined $1 million in compensation as the university braced for major financial strain from the pandemic.
Enfield, whose team made a surprise run to the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight this season, saw his salary increase during the 2018-2019 fiscal year from $3.126 million to $3.35 million. Only Oregon’s Dana Altman and UCLA’s Mick Cronin earn more among Pac-12 basketball coaches, according to the latest coaching salary records available.
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–Aftr a lay-off, I just had to poke my nose back in to this blog when I saw the article about how USC has made Helton a rich man. SC should get a double IRS write-off– one for employee expense, and a second for a charity contribution. So we restart the Helton bashing with over 3-months to go before the 2021 season gets revved up, and boy, the insults sure make for riveting reading. Or not. Anybody wonder what Helton thinks of all this negativity regarding his coaching abilities? Or the attacks on a personal level regarding his sincerity and… Read more »
Having taken a Hiatus from all things ‘Trojan’ it appears LJ’s post rather succinctly describes Clay Helton’s personal philosophy. as long as he can amble along portraying a Head Football Coach to the degree it would not reach the level of ‘Dismissal with Cause’, he can delegate responsibilities to the various Asst. Coaches allowing semi autonomous control along with taking the blame for failures, he’s happy just being the face of the program. He very well knows, no matter what, he will get ALL OF HIS MONEY he has a rock solid contract thanks to skillful Attorneys and Agent with… Read more »
All this talk of salaries for Nikias, Helton and Enfield got me curious about the big picture. As of June 2020, USC has $9.4 Billion in net assets, annual revenue of $5.7 Billion, and expenses of $5.5 Billion (yes, Billion with a capital B). Its largest revenue source, 37%, is providing healthcare, while 30% comes from students (tuition, room and board), 13% from research, 10% from donations and endowments, and 10% from Misc. sources including Athletics. The largest expense, 60%, is employees salaries, benefits and retirement. Nikias, Helton and Enfield made a combined $13.3 million in FY 2020(ending in June… Read more »
Golden, this is an excellent post. Thank you for taking the time, which you now have.
Clay will never be a HC at the division one level again, and it is truly amazing that he has hung around this long, and his incompetency has totally degraded the SC brand.
Begs the question- who is less qualified in their current position- Clay or Joe Biden?
Talk about a race to the bottom.
CBS Sports (https://247sports.com/college/usc/Article/Clay-Helton-hot-seat-2021-USC-Trojans-football-CBS-sports-Power-5-head-coaches-rankings–165556130/).
Helton drops from 41st to 48th in ranking the 65 Power 5 head coaches and is 5th in the Pac 12. This after going 5-1. We on this blog aren’t the only ones with a low opinion of ole Clay. I predict he will be gone by December 5th, +/- 7 days.
And here is how the rest of the Pac-12 stacked up, with Gentleman Clay actually ending up at 7 (247Sports left out Shaw and Wilcox by accident): 1) Utah’s Kyle Wittingham (No. 14, -3 from 2020 rank) 2) Oregon’s Mario Cristobal (No. 16, +8) 3) Arizona State’s Herm Edwards (No. 21, +9) 4) Stanford’s David Shaw (No. 24, -5) 5) Cal’s Justin Wilcox (No. 38, -5) 6) UCLA’s Chip Kelly (No. 39, -3) 7) USC’s Clay Helton (No. 48, -7) 8) Washington’s Jimmy Lake (No. 51, +5) 9) Colorado’s Karl Dorrell (No. 54, +10) 10) Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith (No.… Read more »
Wow, even worse, behind Wilcox and Kelly. SC plays 5 of the 6 ahead of him. Can Helton beat any of them?
Buying or Selling Top Contenders for 2021 College Football Playoff (Kerry Miller, Bleacher Report) Championship Odds: +3300 Reason to Buy: Prolific passing game The past few national champions have had a proficient quarterback and a loaded receiving corps, and that’s no accident. It’s helpful to have a stingy defense, but gone are the days of defending your way to a title. Now it’s all about that pass, ’bout that pass, no-huddle. And Kedon Slovis running the show is a great starting point in USC’s quest for a title. Slovis averaged 320 passing yds and just under three passing TDs per… Read more »
You sure see a lot of this sentiment around Trojan discussions: “Helton will never be a HC anywhere again after this season.”
I just read that Stanford is NOT going to drop the 11 sports programs that it strongly considered doing due to Covid 19 and reduced revenue. The student athletes had some strong influence on that decision stating it would be a breach of contract, etc. Good all the way around for the CONFERENCE OF CHAMPIONS. Stanford, UCLA and USC are the three top NCAA Universities in the nation in total NCAA Championships won by a large large margin. We just won two Women’s Championships in Water Polo and Beach Volleyball so we are closing in on UCLA. I like to… Read more »
When you count football, which I do, USC has more national championships (132) than UCLA.
Beating UCLA has just been a huge pleasure to watch for NCs in both Beach VB and WWP. I just love beating those guys, especially when all the marbles are at stake!
An East Coast based USC fan sent this story from the UGA sportsblog about JT Daniels: JT Daniels and teammates head to California Quarterback JT Daniels was not kidding when he told reporters in early April that he planned on becoming the best leader, on and off the field, that he could possibly be. With players now on a brief break following their recent final exams, Daniels and a host of his offensive teammates are taking the opportunity to get in some extra work back in the quarterback’s home state of California. “Obviously, your role expands the more you play,… Read more »
Boy, USC can really pick ’em…and pay ’em to boot!
Former USC president Max Nikias, ousted after massive sex abuse and other scandals, still earning millions a year later
usatoday.com
What in the hell for is Max still getting paid? Does the grifter Greek need the money? Seriously?
It simply boggles the mind, period.
USC, aka, the Land That Common Sense Forgot.
I don’t know what that really means, but it sounded fun to write, so I did just that.
I understand a guarantee in a contract, which is used to entice the elite coaches to new positions, who might under perform the first two years, but why a guarantee for a program on an upward trajectory? Clay took over a fairly loaded program with an increasing path to the top when he walked in. The two previous coaches were not as bad as they looked on paper. Kiff, had draconian penalties to deal with and Sark had demons to deal with. Neither was at the caliber wanted at the time, but they had more potential than Helton has shown… Read more »
One of the worst things about Helton for me is that whenever USC takes the field against a good team with him at the helm, Notre Dame in particular, I never expect the Trojans to win going in. Part of being a USC football fan used to always be the expectation that USC would show up big in the biggest games. With those days long gone, losses against anyone any good are a foregone pre-game conclusion. Thanks Lynn. You obviously took way too many licks to the head before you decided to pretend you had the faintest clue about how… Read more »
Outside of 2018, Helton has managed to win just enough to keep his job. 2020 put the brakes on any move and he goes 5-1. I suspect the 2021 season will be mediocre losing to good teams exposing Helton’s weaknesses. I have a feeling the expectations will be higher now especially with the new conference commish. Kliavkoff will likely be telling Folt and Bohn, if not already, that SC football needs to be better than this. October through the first part of November could be ugly and by December 5th we will be cheering for the new Head Coach!
December 5th? I have been cheering for a new coach for years.
I highly recommend to the Board Joel Kotkin’s article in this month’s “Newsweek”. You can gain access at joelkotkin.com. The title is “How Los Angeles Descended into Neo-Feudalism – and How to Fix It.” What is happening at SC is a microcosm of what is happening to Los Angeles in particular and Southern California in general. Kotkin details the problems and explains that the decline of Los Angeles can be laid at feet of “…persistently weak leadership…” Kotkin pointed out that Southern California obtained its ascendancy and identity from leaders who “…faced derision from the East Coast elites but they… Read more »
However, I don’t believe Mike Bohn is mediocre. Hopefully, history will prove me correct. I think he has been superior at USC so far, especially in view of the restrictions placed on his ability to fix USC football.
Have to agree with you.
Bohn has been through the mill and knows what to do.
He did not hire Helton and would not have done so.
Bohn would not hire a coach without HC experience unless is
was a known genius.
Mike Bohn is the type the does his homework.
Actually the Kiffin and Sark hires were not bad. They are both great OCs and
had HC experience. But Helton was a huge error.
I’d gleefully take either Kiffin or Sark in a heartbeat now over Gentleman Clay (big surprise, huh?!). He makes USC football hard to even think about sometimes. What a giant turnoff he is.
I disagree. CH came in to calm the chaos. Nobody thought he was a good coach then, but he was stable. He should have been reassigned after his 3 year contract ran out, but we can always look at Lynn Swann for being a complete failure in what he did.
Hiring just a “stable” coach for his very own little try-out would never cut it for me under any circumstances. In fact, I’d take a less stable but more talented/promising coach any day of the week over a doltish smack that nobody else wants. USC could have “calmed things down” a lot better IMO by hiring a talented coach with a real future as opposed to a complete non-starter like Helton. Just because USC needed to get rid of a drunk coach was never a reason to completely throw in the towel and settle for what USC and Nikias did.… Read more »
I agree. The narrative about “stability” is way overplayed as it suggests mutual exclusivity between it and winning with a strong, talented and successful coach. Had we a competent AD during Sark’s era, a thorough and professional replacement exercise would have transpired, and CH would have been swept out the door with the new staff, and we would have been talking about playoffs and championships in something other than wishful thinking these past few years.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda….argh!
You know you’ve reached total rock bottom when in defense of an enormously important, yet unpopular hiring, the only description is, “He’s stable.” 😂
You’ve got to laugh. As we hear so often nowadays, “You can’t make this stuff up.” That seems to apply to a lot of USC’s routines these days.
As far as football goes, USC got what it asked for, and therefore deserved: a total schmuck in charge of football.
Hotseat Helton, aka “Mr. Faith, Family and Football”: True story — my first Pop Warner coach was twice the coach Helton will ever be.
I didn’t say he was a great hire, I said he was hired to settle the chaos. I wouldn’t have hired him either, but at the time nobody had any idea what to do. Hindsight is so 20/20.
I never said you said he was a great hire. Hardly. I said he should have never been hired just because he was so-called “stable.” What a loser position that is. And hindsight doesn’t apply here. Many of us knew he was an utterly ridiculous hire from the word go, who was directly brought on by a publicly floundering Nikias to help Nikias with his fundraising challenges, not to win championships. And as it turned out, Helton not only didn’t settle any chaos, he actually created it because of his ineptitude, lack of any leadership aptitude and totally subpar coaching… Read more »
I stand corrected. Totally agree with your take on Bohn. I am optimistic on SC Football over the next 5 years, just not so long as Clay is running the show. And, Bohn is a gigantic upgrade from Swann, the worst AD in SC history.
2020 has put a pause on changes at SC and elsewhere. I will give Folt a couple more years before I pass some not too informed opinion. She is righting a ship that was run by not just mediocrity but incompetents and crooks. She was in on the hiring of Bohn, the new conference commissioner and the new women’s basketball coach. I hope that “change of direction” Kotkin calls for is happening with her.
This is all on the previous AD’s. Swann gave the worst extension in the history of extensions out of…laziness? Incompetence? Blind hope? I’m not sure, but Clay is enjoying being crazy overpaid. He’s got generational wealth now for being a grossly underperforming coach and the target of every USC fans ire. All that to be said, If given the opportunity I would do the same for my family.
Chris, if there is any solace in this stupidity (and there is no other name for it), it is that our two largest rivals made a similar mistake – UCLA with Jim Mora Jr. and Notre Dame with Charlie Weiss. But, both UCLA and Notre Dame realized their mistakes and fired those coaches. Clay’s contract is probably the largest mistake I am aware of in SC football history. If I have this right, not one Pac 12 school would hire Clay as HC, yet he is the HC of what was the most elite program in the conference (until he… Read more »
Clay is very popular. It is just with the fan bases of the other 11 universities in the PAC.
@Chris I think “blind hope” is simply giving Lynn Swann WAY too much credit. So is incompetence. You have to be a really special kind of stupid to do what Swann did. His kind of egotistical idiocy doesn’t come around all that often. It would sure be great to have him sometime explain why he decided to cripple USC football for many years with a coach no one else wanted even a sniff at. Maybe MEM wanted Clay. Maybe not. Maybe it was just a falsehood made up by Clay’s big-time agent because he couldn’t come up with any other… Read more »
This is o e of those articles that just makes you shake your head.
I’m wondering, just what doesn’t make us shake our heads about Gentleman “Faith, Family & Football” Clay?