As much as I question Haden's selection.....a part of me thinks Helton as Head Coach was jammed down Pat Haden's throat. Remember, Haden was previously targeting at the "Sark/Petersen for HC"level a few years earlier. After Cutty Sark drunk firing debaucle....clean-rep Helton was named interim coach.....similar to Donte is today....only as a placemarker. Later, selecting Helton months as Full Time HC "out of the blue" seems like a knee jerk directive to Pat Haden from President Nikias who was awash in scandals....some of them (Med School Dean and OBGyn) due to Nikias' own lack of action/oversight.....which is why he is gone now. Nikias has his fingerprints all over the Helton hire.....a panic move....to easily "clean up" one of his messes. Not a football decision.....but purely "optics" on behalf of USC "Image". Renewing Helton is 100% on Lynn Swann.....what a dumbshit maneuver......Swann could not have been that stupid.....but Lynn's gone also.
Let's get this hiring right....this time. We have the right people doing the search....and have learned a lot.
Suck was done at Udub ... they were tired of the puke and the losing. Haden got a kick back from the agent to hire that ass wipe.
Haden got kick backs from Korn Ferry for that fake search and from Suckisian’s agent.
Getting Kiffin & Sark Going into & during unfair Sanctions was not Easy sell. We often, myself included, forget that.
No one anticipated Kiffin shitting the bed or Sark drinking himself out of the job. Ok maybe this is wrong lol. Sark did have a rep. NCAA and Paul Dee worked their magic.
Thought Billionaire Wayne Hughes was behind the Helton renewal. Pretty sure that was reported?
I have no inside information but I have opinions.
No question the Helton hire was an "optics" move, from the drunk to Mr. Clean.
But I think Haden was lazy and/or stupid enough to make the move without external pressure from the administration. Remember the names that were being tossed around as possible replacements -- Chip Kelly, Tom Herman, Justin Fuente, Kevin Sumlin were at the top of the list. For all Haden's talk about a nationwide search with a search firm on the case, I've always believed the search firm was just a front or that they made recommendations Haden ignored. It's impossible to believe a search firm thoroughly vetted the available candidates and landed on Helton. What's easy for me to believe, though, is that nobody Haden seriously considered showed any interest in the job. Maybe he didn't seriously consider -- meaning, actively pursue, the way a real executive would go after a guy to fill his most important job opening -- anyone, or maybe he did and got turned down. I don't know, and I've never read anything that sounded authoritative.
All of which leads me to Occam's Razor. The most likely scenario to me is that Haden, being his lazy self and not being especially interested in bringing in a coach who might go 12-0 but not "the right way," chose Helton as the easy choice for which he would face no short-term blowback from his bosses.