Greetings from London - Thoughts on Oj Mayo

'Ello from London! It's been a while since I've made any posts. Been busy with school and traveling.

Anyways, this whole OJ Mayo thing is going to get ugly. "Allegedly" he accepted gifts from this sports agency so they could secure him as a client when he left to the NBA. I put "allegedly" in quotations because you know he did. He was flat broke before he came here, and now he is the best dresser on the team and owns a 60 in. plasma tv.

Anyways, OJ is going to get off scott-free. He is going to the NBA to make his millions. This leaves USC absolutely fucked. This is a huge deal. This comes in the wake of the Reggie Bush scandal, where similar things happened. It just shows that USC can't control their star athletes.

So anyways, USC is going to get in big trouble. If I am on the NCAA committee, I am kicking the Trojans out of the NCAA for a year. Make them ineligible to compete in the Pac-10 tourney. Take away a couple scholarships. This is the perfect opportunity for them to make a statement about accepting gifts while still in college. Mike Garrett, USC's athletic director, needs to either get fired or make some serious changes.

We all knew Mayo was a headcase before he got to USC. To quote Bill Simmons,

Like it or not, Mayo's style of game resonates with a certain demographic, with his final high school dunk symbolizing the divide between traditional fans and the budding generation that was weaned on Slam Magazine and me-first "superstars" like Stephon Marbury and Vince Carter (neither of whom has played on a 50-win NBA team, by the way). Head over to YouTube and you'll find an unedited clip of the dunk that makes Mayo look like an attention-seeking punk, as well as a heavily edited clip of the same dunk that lionizes it. Is it alarming that a 19-year-old kid throwing himself a halfcourt alley-oop in the final minute of a 40-point win, dunking it, tossing the ball into the stands and getting thrown out of his final high school game, then soaking in a standing ovation could be considered a beautiful moment by some people? Probably not. That's just our culture now. Rappers sing songs with their own names as the chorus. Wannabe celebrities intentionally leak sex tapes to make themselves famous. Rich teenagers make fools of themselves on "My Super Sweet 16" and don't even get that they're the joke.

Tim Floyd needs to start getting some character guys. Something tells me Lil' Romeo and Demar Derozan are not going to be those guys.

As for Mayo - he is scum. He came in as a cocky high school kid who wanted to be the star on a mediocre team. He punched out Daniel Hackett and broke his jaw (which was covered up nicely by the athletic dept). He hogged the ball and turned the ball over. And everyone looked past it. All Trojans were just happy to have him.

He can do whatever he wants. He's OJ Mayo.

And now, when all USC fans stuck with him, he stabbed them in the back. He will be long gone and USC will pay the consequences. Is that right? Absolutely not. Mayo's name should be erased from the record books. Every USC student who has his jersey should burn it. He just completely screwed over a program that was on the rise. Mayo should never return to USC. He should not be welcome.

I'll tell you what - Ben Howland wouldn't stand for that for one second. UCLA's players have showed nothing but class for the last 5 years, while USC has had ill-advised early entry's to the draft and transfers. Sorry Floyd. You're a lovable coach. You show emotion. But you blatantly ignored the problems. You HAD to know something was up. And you ignored it.

I say USC fires Floyd and Garrett. USC's two biggest stars of the decade, and they both got illegal benefits while they were in college.

But hey, at least they were entertaining to watch, right?