Clay Helton reveals what time USC will wake up for early-morning game

The Pac-12 returns to action on Saturday with its first games of the season, and their slate will begin extremely early in the morning. The USC Trojans will host the Arizona State Sun Devils at 9:00 a.m. local time, which is an unheard of early kickoff time on the West Coast.

USC coach Clay Helton was a guest on CBS’ “Inside College Football” on Tuesday and talked about the early start time. He was asked what time the team will be waking up that morning in preparation of the game.

“Well, we started it last week at 5:45,” Helton said. “We went exactly through the process of waking everybody up, making sure that everybody’s tested, everybody’s fed. Getting over to the stadium the sun was just rising out of the Coliseum, which I had not seen, and it’s about as pretty as it gets. It’s going to be a great, crisp fall day in Los Angeles, California, a beautiful day, and a great day to play a game.”

Players are getting tested for COVID-19 the morning of the game, per Pac-12 regulations, which is part of the process Helton described. Then they will have to get ready for the game.

Helton is in his fifth full season as USC’s head coach and sixth overall since taking over for Steve Sarkisian in 2015. There has been all kinds of talk and even a report about Helton losing his job, but he remains the team’s head coach.

Pac-12 teams won’t have much of a margin for error in the shortened seven-game season.