A Few Words on OJ

Ten minutes after I walked into my office today, my boss was already giving me shit – “So how do you like that OJ Mayo now?” I’m sure the rest of you aren’t far behind. For those of you who haven’t been glued to your television sets all weekend, a guy named Louis Johnson – formerly a member of OJ’s entourage – came clean and told ESPN that Mayo had accepted $30,000 in gifts over the last four years from an LA promoter named Rodney Guillory. Once OJ made it to the L, he would repay those favors by signing with an agent from Bill Duffy Associates (BDA) – something OJ did the day he declared for the draft.

As fascinating as this story is, my feelings on it are pretty clean cut: as a USC basketball fan, why am I supposed to care about this? Am I supposed to feel guilty, or be pinged with some sort of regret because some guy gave OJ Mayo nice clothes and a flat screen TV?

I’m not a fan of OJ Mayo the celebrity, or OJ Mayo’s entourage, or OJ Mayo’s self-marketing aspirations. I’m a USC basketball fan, and this ‘scandal’ and OJ’s USC basketball career are hardly related. There was no institutional involvement in buying OJ Mayo a flat screen TV. I find it hard to believe that someone like Tim Floyd – who by all accounts is as good a guy as he is a coach, and has repeatedly stood up for OJ’s character and actions – would put his own name on the line if he had any idea that OJ was blatantly breaking NCAA rules.

This thing has nothing to do with OJ’s USC basketball career (which lasted all of one year). It’s not like USC higher-ups visited OJ in high school and slipped him envelopes full of $100 bills that had “Fight On!” written on the back of them. None of this had even the slightest effect on the 20.4 PPG, 4.5 RPG, and 3.3 APG that OJ averaged last year, which is why I couldn’t care less about this as a USC basketball fan.

This is also why idiots like Pat Forde need to get off their bandbox. Really, Pat? This is our fault? Take a second and remember how OJ Mayo ended up at USC – he quite literally recruited himself. He had one of his boys call up Tim Floyd and say “How would you like it if OJ Mayo came to play for the Trojans?” It was clear, both now and then, that this was part of a plan to craft OJ’s “brand” and make him more marketable as a player. LA was an easy place to do that.

According to USC’s official denial of this debacle, both the NCAA and the PAC-10 “reviewed O.J. Mayo's amateur status before and during his enrollment at USC, and did not identify any amateurism violations. Mayo and USC fully cooperated in these investigations.” If this is true, what exactly was USC supposed to do? Were we supposed to say to OJ: “Sorry man – we know you’re a prep legend, and you’d be the highest profile basketball recruit we’ve ever pulled in…but I think we’ll pass. Someone might’ve bought you some new clothes while you were in high school. Good luck playing for UCLA!”

Pat Forde claims that OJ was “a player everyone in Hoopsworld strongly suspected was no amateur before he set foot in Los Angeles.” Um, Pat? If that’s the case, where was your groundbreaking investigative reporting back then? If it was so obvious, why weren’t you telling us about it? Newsflash: THIS HAPPENS EVERYWHERE!! Instead of taking your self-righteous, melodramatic stand that “Someone has to stop USC!!” you should be working a little harder to figure out where else this is going on. You seem to realize that off the basketball court, in the offices of high-profile agents and wherever the shady ‘runners’ like Rodney Guillory hang out, there’s another game being played. For the sake of your readers, why don’t you try and learn a little more about that game while you’re getting over your envy that no one can beat our football team.