/ lolwut ?

Like this is surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to college sports over the past 10 years. USC is dirty as hell and has been for a long time.

OJ Mayo has probably been getting cash since he was 8.

One Thousand Dollars. That's it?

OJ Mayo is destined to go the Chad Johnson route - no matter what they pay him he'll be broke in 5 years. When he played high school ball in Cincinnati he and Bill Walker ran around like Capone.

Fark him

What exactly does it mean to have been an "associate" of Mayo?

Tip to coaches: if you're recruiting a high school kid who has "associates," you have a 100% chance of winding up in an ethically compromising situation. Stay the fark away.

KaponoFor3: Like this is surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to college sports over the past 10 years. USC is dirty as hell and has been for a long time.

Rims

/which he probably got as well.

A family friend is currently an athlete at a major university. The athletes get extra "academic" scholarships that provide spending money. The academic scholarship gives her $2000 per semester spending money. The AD advisor even called this scholarship "spending money". It's perfectly within the rules since it's a scholarship and any student gets cash back if the scholarship is worth more than expenses.

USC just needs to be smarter on how they funnel the money.

IAmRight: I like that he was given $250,000 for guiding Mayo to an agent and $1000 for guiding him to a college program for a year.

So, let's see:

A) Money was not given to Mayo

Right, but previous reporting on this story had Guillory giving money to Mayo. So giving money to Guillory could be seen as funnelling some money to Mayo as well.

Isn't it time to just admit that big time college athletes are employees of the University, or at the least work study (or whatever it's called these days) students, and should be paid accordingly? We know this kind of thing has been going on in one form or another since the John Wooden UCLA days, and it' not going to stop anytime soon.

If you pay athletes even work-study wages, you don't eliminate the problem, but you probably cut it in half at least. And given the practice schedules/travel these athletes are expected to keep, they earn it just as much as the dude proctoring the computer lab while doing his biology homework.

Kygz: OJ Mayo has probably been getting cash since he was 8.

The Recruiters

Fear four words, USC fans; Lack of Institutional Control.

the biggest redneck here: Lack of Institutional Control.

Pretty tough to argue that they DID have institutional control given all of the scandals and problems their basketball/football programs have had that I detailed in an earlier post.

Can we please catch Pete Carrol next? I'd love to see him go back to the NFL and fail miserably again when playing on a level field.

the biggest redneck here: Fear four words, USC fans; Lack of Institutional Control.

I wonder about this because I do not think that the NCAA would ever give USC the recruiting beat down the deserve. They make far to much money for the major sports. I think its pretty arrant that both major programs at the school are filthy, but they will only lose 1 or 2 scholar ships at most.

/give them the SMU treatment
//will never happen

Ponzholio: The problem with paying athletes (in addition to what they already get in terms of their scholarships) is who's all eligible?

Also, you'd severely widen the gap between the major-conference programs and the smaller schools, who couldn't afford to pay their players.

If you pay athletes even work-study wages, you don't eliminate the problem, but you probably cut it in half at least

I was a work study student and got paid four dollars an hour. I don't see this kind of chump change will make a difference; if anything it will make it harder to monitor whether the players are being paid illegally. Despite its flaws, I think the current system is necessary to at least maintain some semblence of integrity.

Gonz: Cucumber_Breath: I wonder about this because I do not think that the NCAA would ever give USC the recruiting beat down the deserve. They make far to much money for the major sports.

I disagree. The NCAA doesn't need USC to put out a viable product. The BCS and March Madness are both guaranteed money from the TV contracts, and neither event is dependent on Southern Cal. It would hurt the BCS marginally, but some other PAC-10 team would rise up. USC is not even a factor in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

I predict a 2-year postseason ban, loss of scholarships, and 5 years probation.

Lack of institutional control would encompass their football program too, and there's the rub. The NCAA isn't going to kill most of their West Coast fanbase even if video surfaces of Pete Carroll banging the entire USC O-Line while using $100 bills as rubbers.

The NCAA might not need USC to produce a viable product, but they sure as hell need their late-season "fan" base. Remember, they essentially have an annual monopoly on the vast majority of college football fans all points west of Austin, TX from mid-October forward.

A postseason ban for USC would mean they'd be mostly irrelevant for at least three or four years thereafter, handing the BCS a television viewing loss of a lot of the western third of the country for the forseeable future. No way in hell that happens.

Finally, what's so pathetic about this is that USC doesn't need to do this sh*t. And yes, I realize that the AD isn't walking around handing Reggie Bush hundos, but his most important purpose BY FAR is to simply make sure it isn't happening. Like the television ratings, they've got a damn monopoly on all recruits west of Texas. Where the fu*k else are blue chip footballers gonna go, Colorado State? Not bloody likely.

dionysos: Lack of institutional control would encompass their football program too, and there's the rub. The NCAA isn't going to kill most of their West Coast fanbase even if video surfaces of Pete Carroll banging the entire USC O-Line while using $100 bills as rubbers.

I could've hit "refresh" and saved myself some typing.

dionysos
Lack of institutional control would encompass their football program too, and there's the rub. The NCAA isn't going to kill most of their West Coast fanbase even if video surfaces of Pete Carroll banging the entire USC O-Line while using $100 bills as rubbers.

I agree with you. While the WAC likes to thump their chests and say they are better than the PAC-10 on the football field, the PAC-10 destroys them on a team by team revenue basis. Beheading USC would cause a sharp decrees overall interest for the PAC-10 which would hurt the NCAA's bottom line. They would never risk their bottom line.

Cucumber_Breath: dionysos
Lack of institutional control would encompass their football program too, and there's the rub. The NCAA isn't going to kill most of their West Coast fanbase even if video surfaces of Pete Carroll banging the entire USC O-Line while using $100 bills as rubbers.

I agree with you. While the WAC likes to thump their chests and say they are better than the PAC-10 on the football field, the PAC-10 destroys them on a team by team revenue basis. Beheading USC would cause a sharp decrees overall interest for the PAC-10 which would hurt the NCAA's bottom line. They would never risk their bottom line.

I meant Mountain West. Sorry. But I have a feeling that the PAC-10 makes more money than both the WAC and Mountain West combined for football. I will go crunch the numbers and get back to you guys.

Total Revenue from football*:

PAC-10 - $144,281,525
WAC - $32,945,220
Mountain West - $34,135,435

*PAC-10 numbers do not include USC or Stanford and Mountain West numbers do not include TCU, Brigham Young & Air Force. F

From all accounts that I have read trying to get USC's numbers, they are generate more than the entire WAC combined. I think the NCAA will have to look long an hard before they try and kill these bastards.

Ponzholio: The problem with paying athletes (in addition to what they already get in terms of their scholarships) is who's all eligible? Should it just be revenue-generating sports get paid or non-revenue generating sports like rowing, cross-county, golf be paid too? Should it just be scholarship athletes, or do walk-ons get paid?

If you make it a work-study type thing, then ideally I would say pay all athletes in all sports, but obviously that will not be feasible in all, or perhaps even the majority, of situations. I think a lot of progress could be made if the NCAA as a governing body would just simply introduce rules that even allow for doing this, and let the universities decide based on the relative health of their programs.

I mean let's face it: guys like Mayo or other superstar athletes are always going to be a problem regardless of what you do. What you do accomplish in paying players in major programs a little, though, if help out the non-superstar players who nevertheless are devoting 30+ hours a week or whatever to their sport. If it were up to me, I would even go a step further and encourage schools to offer "sports" as a major. Sounds weird, but consider all the careers associated with college/professional sports these days: broadcasting, sports marketing, player representation, team management, coaching, scouting, and probably a ton more I can't think of off the top. There are a lot of college athletes who pretty much dedicate their lives to their sport of choice from ages ~5-23, who will never sniff the professional level, or will just have a brief cup of coffee with a pro team to steal a baseball term, and then are left to face life with a Communications or General Studies degree that may or may not have helped prepare them for a job in a sports-related field. Universities, at their core, are designed to educate and train young people in their chosen profession, so why not acknowledge this and start offering a major that will train an athlete in some sports related field? It's certainly no worse a major than some others one can take. Plus it would obviously attract students who are interested in a sports-related career but not necessarily athletes themselves.

Certainly there are existing classes/majors that universities offer that already cover some of this, but if you're a major university like Texas, Michigan, USC, Miami, or any other number of BCS caliber schools, consolidate your education efforts in this field into a "Sports" department. This country is at a point where sports are literally billion dollar industries (and not likely to go away anytime soon), wanting to pursue a career in such a field is just as valid as wanting to get into any other industry, whether you're looking to enter as a player or otherwise. Universities and the NCAA are still working with rules that largely treat college basketball and football as if it was still the 1950's, and it's just something overachieving students do for fun or to keep in shape. It's time for college sports to evolve.

Mmmmmmmmm



and

Paying for Trojans? Unpossible!!

OJ mayo may well have had some amatuerism issues before going to SC, and SC had better be squeaky clean with the ongoing investigation. But this "source" is a two bit felon who got close enough to this story to get a little bit of spotlight. It's all he has and he's gonna milk it.

No one on this board has any idea what they are talking about.

Cucumber_Breath: dionysos
Lack of institutional control would encompass their football program too, and there's the rub. The NCAA isn't going to kill most of their West Coast fanbase even if video surfaces of Pete Carroll banging the entire USC O-Line while using $100 bills as rubbers.

I agree with you. While the WAC likes to thump their chests and say they are better than the PAC-10 on the football field, the PAC-10 destroys them on a team by team revenue basis. Beheading USC would cause a sharp decrees overall interest for the PAC-10 which would hurt the NCAA's bottom line. They would never risk their bottom line.

I meant Mountain West. Sorry. But I have a feeling that the PAC-10 makes more money than both the WAC and Mountain West combined for football. I will go crunch the numbers and get back to you guys.

Hmmm, strip the PAC 10 of it's BCS bid and give it to the Mountain West? That could actually solve a host of other problems the NCAA faces.

He's going to get rich endorsing Hellman's and MinuteMaid.

Hmmm, strip the PAC 10 of it's BCS bid and give it to the Mountain West? That could actually solve a host of other problems the NCAA faces.


UMMM how about no!

There are 9 other schools in the Pac 10 that are clean. Well, maybe not UW...JK Husky Buddies!

Go Cougs

IAmRight: Oregon and Washington: the only two schools in the Pac 10 with a losing record against the MWC (at 1-2 for both...and one of Washington's was the game where they almost beat a top 25 BYU team despite being wholly incompetent the entire season)

Ah, yes, the game where getting excited in the last seconds of a game resulted in a penalty. Thank god the NCAA told us that... we wouldn't want these football players to be happy or anything, now would we?

Cost them a chance at the game, that is.

IAmRight: Fun fact about the SEC: If, say, the ACC were replaced in the BCS with the MWC (which is one of the conferences that is actually mentioned every year as a possibility if one were to have to leave the BCS), the SEC would be 5 games under .500 this decade against BCS conferences. They do, however, have a record of 103-8 against the Sun Belt, WAC, and MAC!

The SEC has played 5 non-conference games against the BCS/MWC?

God help the next non-BCS school that screws up...

/Shark