Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz, who is making his first Rose Bowl appearance as a head coach, echoed Shaw’s sentiments – to an extent. “These are quality individuals that I made the utmost respect for”.
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Now that Clay Helton is in charge of the USC program, he chose to make some changes to his coaching staff. The loss, coming five days after Helton was named permanent head coach, dropped the Trojans’ record to 8-5. Prior to that he was the defensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs and Arizona Cardinals in addition to a wealth of years as a position coach in the league.
The four coaches will not coach in the team’s Holiday Bowl contest against Wisconsin.
Clemson, as the only undefeated FBS team, after defeating North Carolina 45-37 in the ACC Championship game, got the top seed, and will head to the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Eve Day (kickoff at 4 PM EST; 1 PM PST). This way, Helton, who was handed the play calling duties by Steve Sarkisian this year, said that he can concentrate on being the team’s CEO.
Helton was the Trojans’ offensive coordinator until Sarkisian was sacked in October, and he led USC to a 5-3 finish.
“With the coaches we have on staff and with our graduate assistants, we feel more than confident in doing a great job with this bowl game”, said Helton, via ESPN.
Wilcox was a lightning rod for fan criticism for much of the last two seasons.
Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan scores on a throw from teammate Christian McCaffrey during the first half of a Pac-12 Conference championship against USC on Saturday in Santa Clara.
Helton said USC’s other assistant coaches would be retained. Wilcox was the defensive coordinator at Washington, Tennessee and Boise State before coming to USC while Heyward coached the secondary at Oregon State for four seasons before his time at Washington and USC.
Asked whether one or both could return to his staff, Helton said he would be “looking at all avenues” and “talk to several coaches”.
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“I think 99 percent of the matchups he has out the back field on the one-on-one, he’s going to win it”, linebacker Su’a Cravens said.
