Musings from Arledge: The fall of Carthage

I have been asked my thoughts on Clay Helton’s firing. I don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on the past, and it is not entirely clear why people would be so sure that I even have thoughts on the end of The Clay Helton Crisis. But as luck would have it, I do have an opinion on America’s greatest day since Yorktown. 

To be honest, though, my first thought wasn’t a thought at all. It was a feeling. And that feeling was: pure, unadulterated joy. 

It was the feeling an eight-year-old child might have if they woke up one day and unexpectedly discovered it was Christmas morning. 

No, that’s not quite right. 

It’s the feeling an eight-year-old child might have if for the previous few years some middle-aged dude would routinely break the child’s favorite toys. Not because the man was cruel. No, the middle-aged man was kind and caring. He broke toys not out of malice, but out of sheer incompetence. He broke toys because he couldn’t help but break them. He broke them because he was seemingly made to break them. He broke them because while he never should have been allowed near toys, he was for some reason – due to the acts of fools or saboteurs – entrusted with the care of all toys. 

And so the breaking began. In short order, that he would break the toys became a certainty. Everybody knew the middle-aged man would break the toys. No matter how hard he tried not to, he would. And everybody knew it was coming. Everybody expected it. Everybody except the middle-aged man, who was visibly shocked every time a toy broke, and he would become dumbfounded – mouth open, face frozen in a look of shock and horror. 

The man tried to justify the toy-breaking. He was frequently asked about it, and he said the toy breaking wasn’t all that bad. That toy almost didn’t break, he would sometimes say. We were so close to a non-break day. Or sometimes he would admit that toys were breaking, but he would promise that soon the toy-breaking would stop. He said that he was on the verge of not breaking any toys at all. We’re almost to the point where the toys will stay shiny and new, he said. In November, there will be no broken toys, he promised. 

Yet still the toys broke, still the face responded with open-mouthed surprise, and still the words of apology, the words of excuse, the words promising future days of shiny, unbroken toys, would spill out. 

But nobody believed the words. And the eight-year-old child mourned the toys, and he mourned the open-mouthed look of surprise, and he mourned the words. He really, really mourned the words. But nothing changed. For years the toys, the surprise, and the words were the same. And the child started to wonder if these things would ever change. He remembered the day the middle-aged man was hired to oversee the toys. He remembered that he told everybody who would listen, “That guy looks like he’s going to break all of the toys.” But not enough people believed him at the time. 

Now everybody believed him, but they were powerless to stop the Toy Breaker. The child had heard rumors that the people in charge of the Toy Breaker loved the Toy Breaker for reasons the child could not understand, for reasons nefarious and petty. He was told – and maybe even started to believe – that the Toy Breaker would be breaking toys for the next 15 years, that the Toy Breaker was determined never to stop breaking toys and that the only people who could make the Toy Breaker go away would not, under any circumstances, make the Toy Breaker go away.

And then, one day, quite unexpectedly, the eight-year-old child woke up to find that the Toy Breaker was gone. He had been given five carts loaded with gold and had moved far away from the toys. And the child was told that it was Christmas, and that new toys were on the way, and that a new caretaker of toys – Somebody who knows how to take care of toys! Somebody who won’t break them! Somebody whose face won’t show the look of surprise with each toy-breaking! Somebody who won’t offer words that nobody believes after each broken toy! – would be appointed. 

The child knew he should be nervous. He knew that the decision on a new toy caretaker would be made by people who should not be trusted, because every toy caretaker they had hired for many years had been a terrible toy caretaker for one reason or another. But the child didn’t care. He couldn’t worry about the next toy caretaker. The child only knew that the Toy Breaker was gone and that it was Christmas. And the child looked at the gifts, at the tree, at the candy canes. And the child felt joy. Pure, unadulterated joy. 

That, my friends, is how I feel. It’s morning again in America. It’s like the scene in Wizard of Oz where Dorothy steps out from the gray world to color. (Yep, that’s right: the rest of the Pac 12 are the Munchkins. They’re just about to start up the Lollipop Guild/Don’t Go To The Big 10 medley any second.) It’s like being an East Berliner the night the wall came down. Ich bin ein Berliner. It feels the way Kauai looks. It feels good. 

Forty-seven years ago, Gerald Ford told us that our long national nightmare is over. It wasn’t then, but it is now. It truly is. Thank you, Gerry, for expressing it so eloquently.  

So now we begin the rumor-mongering period. Agents will plant stories about their guys being at the top of the list. Alleged USC insiders will offer their insight. Almost all of these stories will be false. The number of people who claim to have inside information is orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who actually know something. Most of us spent the last year or two hearing fellow Trojans tell us that this administration would never fire Clay Helton because they like him, don’t care about football, and just want someone they can control. Yet here we are.

And while I would have liked for Mike Bohn to have made this move a long time ago, let’s give the guy credit. He pulled the trigger. And he did it after game two, even knowing that he’d get some criticism from the media, because he was smart enough to realize that Clay Helton might win the next three games in ugly, undisciplined, almost-unwatchable fashion – that being Clay Helton’s specialty – and then it becomes harder to pull the trigger. The only thing worse than having a leader who is uniquely unequipped to lead the organization is to have such a leader and not be able to fire him. I’m convinced Mike Bohn always wanted to fire Clay Helton. He knew Clay Helton wasn’t the answer to any question worth asking, and he never intended to hitch the wagon of his career to that horse. And this week, finally, like Maverick, he had the shot, there was no danger, so he took it. 

I assume that Mike Bohn will make this next decision like a pro. And that means he’ll understand that resumes matter. I know everybody likes to talk about the coaches with no experience who blossomed into superstars. But this is the same argument that people make against recruiting rankings. But Will Derting was a two-star! Yes, he was. And if you fill your team with two stars, you’ll go 3-9. Recruit five stars and hire coaches with experience and a track record. There are no guarantees, but you put yourself in a much better spot if you do. Almost all of USC’s recent hires were coaches that no other blue-blood program would have even considered. Mr. Bohn, can we stop doing that? Thank you.   

And so, if Mike Bohn ends USC’s policy of self-sanctions in its hiring decisions, our long national nightmare is, indeed, over. And soon, if all goes well, a nightmare will begin for the people of South Bend, for the people of Eugene, for the people of Westwood. Well, maybe not Westwood. Even Clay stomped them most of the time. Things will stay the same for them. 

But as for the Irish, things have taken a turn for the worst. The USC-Notre Dame game – the greatest of all sporting events – will become a competition again rather than a ritualized, human sacrifice. Soon a USC football coach will again walk into South Bend and make Brian Kelly’s face purple with rage. Soon the young men of Notre Dame will lose the high that comes from beating USC and will remember that they still live in the middle of nowhere, on a frozen tundra, surrounded by unattractive women. And they will weep. And the leprechaun will weep. And the movie Rudy will never again be seen. And justice will sweep across the land. 

As for the Ducks, it’s almost dinner time, and we’re having Chinese. Oregon football has a natural ceiling. It doesn’t really matter how much money Phil Knight donates. It doesn’t really matter how clever Oregon’s head coach is. Oregon can only succeed when USC fails. Oregon can only come into southern California and take the best athletes on the west coast when USC is a grease fire. And as Clay Helton was the hottest, greasiest fire going, Oregon was able to seize the day. Now that window is closing. Oregon’s days as a football power are over before they ever really started. It’s time for Oregon to go back to being just a failed, backwater academic institution whose only major of note is pot-growing. 

And what does all this mean for Musings? Thank you for asking, and I suppose it is time to answer the really important question. It means that it is almost time for Musings to become the home of non-stop sunshine pumping. Almost. Graham Harrell is still around, and we’re not done beating on him and his bubble-wrap, no-run, four-play, adjustment-free offensive abomination. But we all know those days are numbered. And when Graham Harrell loads up his cart and leaves to look for a place that will hire him, presumably a place where USC games aren’t televised, the last of the Clay Helton-era bitterness will be swept away. 

In the early days, this is where we used statistics and logic to argue against Clay Helton’s regime. Later, when stats and logic were no longer necessary, they gave way to simple cries of anguish. Musings became a form of group therapy for suffering Trojans. Thank you for letting me serve as your unlicensed and largely unhelpful therapist, fellow Trojans.  

But that’s over now. Clay is gone. Carthage has fallen. And what did the Romans do once Carthage fell? They took over the world. That’s what they did. It is time for USC football to rise again. It is time for Troy to stomp all those who stand in our way. It is time to run the football again. To tackle again. To be disciplined again. To intimidate again. It is time to be USC again. And I plan to cheer the return of USC football glory alongside all of you. 

Carthago deperdita est.