Ahem. Yeah, it's not where they will finish in the Pac-10 this coming season with a team built by (alleged) cheating for years. We will leave that to Kirk Herbstreit, Brent Musberger, and rest of the corporate clowns from ESPN, who will be busy this coming football season to sweep the real story under rug for the purposes of cheap ratings.
The question the entire college football world is really wondering when U$C Trojans come up in any discussion is the one posed by Dennis Dodd. of CBS Sports: just when (if ever) the hammer will fall on the Trojies:
It's been since 2005 that Reggie Bush played at USC.
More than three years since Yahoo! Sports blew the roof off the sucker with the report that Bush accepted cash and benefits worth $300,000 from some would-be agents.
Fifteen months since an investigation of basketball star O.J. Mayo was made public.
Two-and-half months since it was reported the basketball coach slipped Mayo $1,000.
Fifty days since that alleged greaser of the palm, Tim Floyd, resigned.
Admit it, when you heard Thursday that the football program had perhaps committed an NCAA violation in the midst of all this, you were floored.
You had to be. This can't be happening again, can it? The Los Angeles Times reported that Pete Carroll might have violated rules by using former NFL assistant Pete Rodriguez as a consultant.
Carroll, speaking at the Pac-10 media days on Thursday, said the issue was cleared through the compliance department and was not a violation.
That's a relief. Would this be the same compliance department that passed Mayo and his entourage through the hallowed gates of USC? Was that the compliance department that slept while receiver DeWayne Jarrett literally slept -- in an apartment he shared with Matt Leinart that was partially paid for by Leinart's dad?
Read the whole piece from Dodd here in which he calls outs and thoroughly lampoons Mike Garrett's out of control program. More on the (alleged) outlaws from crosstown after the jump.
As Dodd noted apparently Carroll tried to fenagle out of the lates scandal by pointing to U$C*'s (joke of a) compliance department. Upon hearing that news the boys over at BeatSC.com fired off the following post:Yesterday, usc’s head football coach Pete Carroll AND disgraced former head basketball coach Tim Floyd both came out in the Press and told the World that usc guided them to blatantly violate NCAA rules. Carroll was responding to the accusations that he hired NFL consultants to beef up sc’s staff. He admits that he had these guys on payroll, and he admits that they gave him pertinent feedback after watching every game. These are obvious violations in the eyes of everyone in the Sports World NOT wearing cardinal and gold; However, Petey claims that the usc "Compliance Department" (Yeah, right!) told him to go for it.
He says that they looked at these NFL hires, which were above and beyond the limits for amount of coaches, and said that it was fine. In other words, Pete says that the school itself told him to completely ignore the rules. Who cares if you get caught, if the NCAA is paralyzed with fear anyway? Why not cheat, if you can get away with it? It’s all about winning, right? Such is the credo of usc, and it has been for 50 years.
And then, Tim Floyd added feul to the fire. He says that usc instructed him to keep recruiting the dirty-as-sin Renardo Sidney, despite his feelings that money was changing hands illegally, in order to secure Sidney’s "rights." Floyd insinuates that usc purposely avoided looking into Sidney’s nefarious dealings, just so that they wouldn’t find anything to shy away from. Of course, UCLA actually DID look into it, and they found enough to terminate their interest in the kid. But sc, like the three monkeys, decided that if they couldn’t see or hear or smell any evil, then none exists.
At this point it's not just the Trojies who have become a national joke. We are getting to a point now that the joke is really on all the institutions in charge of running college football (and that not only includes the NCAA and the Pac-10 but corporations such as ESPN that only care about ratings) who are making a totaly mockery out of this game.
Guess we have nothing to worry about. NCAA and the Pac-10 will be all over it whenever UCLA self reports a violation about its tennis team or Alabama self reports violations about textbooks. The rule only applies to those schools who actually cares to self report. In other words NCAA's rule only appears to everyone but U$C.*
Oh and don't hold your breath about ESPN or ABC talking up these issues on air because clowns like Kirk Herbstreit will be too busy groveling over the next QB from U$C*.
GO BRUINS.