Afterward, Helton tugged his trademark cap even lower and ducked his head in embarrassment when I told him I was going to basically write the same column again, only stronger.
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Meanwhile, the football community, including Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Barkley, who previously played for the Trojans, doled out congratulatory notes to Helton on Twitter.
On Stanford’s side, the victory over USC was really the first game, at least statistically, where McCaffrey started to make a name for himself with 115 rushing yards.
Helton had been an assistant at USC since 2010, working as the offensive coordinator under Lane Kiffin and Sarkisian. USC is 2-6 ATS in their last 8 games following an ATS win. It was at this point in the season that people wrote off the Trojans for the Pac-12 and the College Football Playoff.
USC has some momentum right now. It’s going to be, more so than in the past, an older school USC-Stanford game.
USC has played well under interim coach Clay Helton, prompting Athletic Director Pat Haden to remove the interim tag and appoint Helton as the team’s full-time coach. He jokingly referred to himself as the Trojans’ “third-string head coach” when he took over for Orgeron and won the Las Vegas Bowl, but the backup to the backup is now the starter.
Stanford will be a test for them, but it’s far from impossible. He was the joystick during Stanford’s seven-game winning streak.
Stanford coach David Shaw refers to the Pac-12 Championship Game at Levi’s Stadium on Saturday as a chess match, but a game of checkers may be more like it.
Chantel Jennings: The Trojans are going to win for a few reasons. They showed up in a big way on a big stage.
USC and Stanford ended the season with fairly similar numbers. It seems like in sports, this is always one of those things we talk about, and it is a hard thing to do. If it’s good enough, great, if it’s not, fine.
AIR WATCH: Goff’s 542 yards passing were the most in the country for the week, and his 4,252 yards passing for the season is a Cal school record. We’ve still got to win the Pac-12 South. We can still do that, and we can still win the championship.’ He made us stay on course, and we knew that the goal ahead of us was still reachable.
Because if No. 7 Stanford somehow can execute a double-jump by beating No. 20 USC and leapfrogging over Clemson or Alabama in the College Football Playoff standings, the Cardinal may be able to steal a berth in the national semifinals on New Year’s Eve. Saturday’s battle between these perennial conference heavyweights has the potential to be a tremendous game, but I feel certain the conference seat of power will return to the North for its eighth straight year. “I welcome them with open arms, because as a coach, I expect them of myself”.
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“Football is happening so fast”, McCaffrey said during a phone interview Tuesday as he walked briskly to his next destination on the Stanford campus. However, Stanford enters Saturday a puncher’s chance of making the four-team field. After holding Auburn to 91 yards rushing on 37 carries, Alabama leads the nation by allowing an average of only 78.9 rushing yards per game… “Clay Helton is the right man at the right time for the USC football program”. If USC has resembled Stanford in its emphasis on “big man ball”, as Helton calls it, the change has come more out of necessity than coincidence.
