Ick's Corner

By now, unless you live under a rock you have heard whats going on with O.J. Mayo. On the off chance you haven’t allow me to give you the cast of characters so we can get you up to speed.

O. J. Mayo – USC Trojan rent-a-player about to enter the upcoming NBA draft.

Definition of *Rent-a-player* Due to the new rules in the NBA a player must attend atleast one year of college. The player will most likely go to a school they feel have a chance to win a championship. The chosen school will most likely issue a scholarship to this player. Then when the school year is up, the player will declare for the draft. If they do not sign with an agent, and they are not drafted, the player could return to school if they wish.

Louis Johnson – Part of Mayo’s inner circle, turned informant. Johnson is the one that laid out the whole operation down from who the runner was paying Mayo, where the money was coming from, and what was being provided to Mayo

Rodney Guillory – Person put in charge of basically keeping money in Mayo’s pocket, and making sure he stays happy..

Bill Duffy Associates- The golden goose!! Sports agency based in Northern California who wanted to sign Mayo after he was drafted.

Ok now lets continue..

USC has released a statement saying they plan on telling the NCAA they had no idea what was going on, and they banned Guillory from getting any tickets. Well what else would they do? Tell the truth? It’s no big secret kids are getting paid, no matter what the NCAA tries to do to stop it, there will always be ways around it. My number one question when all this came to light..

When Johnson was basically snitching his gravy train out for taking money from Guillory he said something that struck me as odd. He was talking about the clearing process Mayo went thru to be accepted into USC. He said that USC had *character issues* with Mayo, and were hesitant to bring him in because they were worried *something was going on*. STOP RIGHT THERE!

If you are going thru the clearing process of bringing someone to your program, this person is a high profile athlete, and your worried something is going on and you have character issues.. WHY TAKE THE CHANCE??? Especially if the name of your school is USC, and your program has been brought up recently for another high profile student athlete taking cash and prizes?? Anyone remember Reggie Bush??? Now I realize that you have to keep not only your fans, but your boosters and alumni happy, by getting top recruits from around the country.. but this really seems like an unnecessary risk for a program that is already on shaky ground after the Reggie Bush fiasco.

Teams around the league including the Timberwolves are saying they aren’t worried about the allegations concerning Mayo, but I still wonder. I don’t see him slipping very far based on ability.. but when your talking about contracts worth millions, endorsements, and marketability of your draft pick to your fans.. Character issues have to be taken into consideration. Well unless your Jerry Jones. ;)