Chris Dufresne of the LA Times puts U$C* on "death watch":

It doesn't really matter now what the NCAA does -- or doesn't do -- to USC basketball.

OK, it does. If the NCAA comes down hard on the program in the case of O.J. Mayo, there will be scholarship losses, vacated games, history to be written and a lot of explaining to do.

In a sense, though, the basketball program as it wobbles now is effectively finished -- and you get the sense embattled Coach Tim Floyd knows it.

Sometimes, all it takes is the specter of scandal to bring a kingdom down. People are fleeing USC so fast you would have thought Floyd's fast-break had been replaced with a swine flu outbreak.

This isn't a SMU-like death penalty sentence for USC; it's a death watch sentence.

And pronounces Timmeh's program to be "dead":

Days, or weeks, or months before the NCAA renders its verdict, USC basketball, as you knew it, is dead. The Trojans would be silly to fire Floyd now because, the way things are falling now, you can just let gravity take its course.

To early to make any conclusions IMO. I will believe it when I actually see the NCAA or the Pac-10 lifting a finger against these guys.

Still it's amusing to read all this after hearing all the nonsense about "gap closing" all these years.

BTW Dufresne also zeroed in what might be U$C*s end game at this point:

No matter what happens, it's too late. USC's mission statement now has to be to save football at all cost -- even if the price is basketball.

Didn't we call that like ... what ... months/years ago?

GO BRUINS.