USC fires Helton two games into 7th season
LOS ANGELES » Southern California fired football coach Clay Helton on Monday, two games into his seventh season in charge.
Athletic director Mike Bohn made the move two days after an embarrassing 42-28 home loss to Stanford that dropped the Trojans (1-1, 0-1 Pac-12) out of the AP Top 25.
Donte Williams, the Trojans’ cornerbacks coach and associate head coach, is taking over as head coach. Williams, a Los Angeles-area native and the first Black head coach in USC football history, joined the program in 2020 and has played a major role in USC’s significant recruiting advancements over the past two cycles.
USC visits Washington State this weekend for its road opener.
Helton went 46-24 during his improbable tenure in charge of the longtime West Coast college football powerhouse. The career assistant coach twice took over as USC’s interim head coach before getting his first head coaching job on a permanent basis late in the 2015 season.
NFL TITANS CUT BADGLEY, LOOKING YET AGAIN FOR ANOTHER
KICKER » Tennessee is moving onto yet another kicker, waiving Michael Badgley a day after he missed an extra point and a 46-yard field goal in their season-opening loss.
The Titans announced that they also waived tight end Tommy Hudson and also released linebacker
Jan Johnson from the practice squad. They signed safety Bradley McDougald and tight end MyCole Pruitt off the practice squad.
FOOTBALL FANS FILL STADIUMS
AS NFL SEASON OPENS
Football fans put on a show to mark the opening of the NFL season, filling stadiums around the country for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic disrupted sporting events everywhere.
From New England to Los Angeles, fans with painted faces and dressed in all kinds of interesting garb and headgear cheered on their teams in stadiums allowed to fill their seats to capacity.
Tennis
RADUCANU’S US OPEN TITLE MOVES HER UP 127 SPOTS TO NO. 23 » Emma Raducanu’s qualifier-to-champion run at the U.S. Open vaulted her 127 spots in the WTA rankings to a career-high No. 23.
The 18-year-old from Britain began the year
ranked 345th, rose to 179th in July by reaching Wimbledon’s fourth round in her Grand Slam debut and arrived at Flushing Meadows at 150th. Then Raducanu won all 20 sets she played across 10 victories — three in qualifying and seven in the main draw — to become the youngest woman to win a major championship since Maria Sharapova was 17 at Wimbledon in 2004.
Soccer
SOUTH AFRICA INTERESTED
IN HOSTING FIFA’S CLUB WORLD CUP » South Africa is interested in hosting FIFA’s Club World Cup in December after Japan withdrew because of COVID-19.
South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan told the Associated Press he would meet with FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura in Lagos, Nigeria this week to get more details on what kind of bid South Africa must present to the world body to host the seven-team men’s tournament.