What is this "NCAA" you speak of?

So it seems another USC star has been taking cash, gifts and anything offered his way in order to gain his signature with someone wanting to make money off him later. The Reggie Bush saga is still playing out, and the OJ Mayo one may just be beginning. For this debate, we are going to just assume what the general public that doesn't call itself Trojan fans has assumed......Bush and Mayo are guilty of taking a lot of money and gifts while in school with an unwritten agreement to sign with said sports agents/marketing companies when they turned pro. These things haven't been proved yet, but I'd bet 90% of the sporting fan public has assumed they are true.

Here's what stuck out to me the most on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" report......USC, the NCAA and the Pac 10 did their own investigation PRIOR to Mayo arriving in SoCal because questions had arisen about his potential eligibility. It was said to be a widely known fact that in order for you to have a chance at landing Mayo, you had to have an "in" with his "handler" Rodney Guillory. How does the NCAA overlook this. ESPN showed us receipts for purchases made of gifts given to Mayo. They showed us a paper trail of money wired to Mayo's friends. ESPN got a guy to confess to being in the "inner circle" and seeing the dealings first hand with Mayo. My question is, how on earth does the NCAA not find these things first.

Look, there is a dramatic difference from a NCAA perspective when it comes to paying a player to sign with an agent versus paying him to come to your school. The reason schools like Alabama have gotten nailed in the last decade is that they had uncontrolled boosters handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence a kid at signing day. I'm not sure what role the NCAA wants to play in stopping agents and their henchmen from getting to 16 and 17 year old kids before they get to college...or what role they want to play in a Reggie Bush type player getting money not because he's a USC football player, but because he is about to be a NFL first round pick. Obviously from a NCAA standpoint, paying them to come to your school is much more their concern than some company having a lackey hand a kid money so he uses them in his professional career. Still, something has to be done....right?

Here's the problem for the NCAA.....who do you punish? They have no authority of the agents and marketing companies coming after these kids. The process might be illegal, but it's not on the top of law enforcements priority list. You can't really punish the kid that took the money. Most of the time they are gone from the NCAA reach by the time the facts come out. You are left with a school that probably turned a blind eye to what the player was getting. I was in college not to long ago. I can tell you that not many college kids have a flat screen TV in the dorm rooms. It also should be a red flashing light when Reggie Bush's parents upgrade houses on such and extreme level. Still, how accountable do you hold the school? It's not like the school or anyone affiliated with it is giving him money....they didn't pay for him to come there. However, they are the only ones the NCAA can really drop a hammer on.

The currently invisible NCAA has to do something. They've basically tried to stay away from the Bush scandal it seems. I believe it is because they don't know how to handle punishment in these situations. If you continue to turn away and ignore it, it will present bigger issues. You don't think any other athletes at USC noticed Mayo having extra cash all the time, the big screen in the dorm room? You don't think it can lead to asking "How can I get mine?" and asking a weak minded booster for his new TV? You can't let kids get extra benefits just because you don't have as much power of their "source" as you did with the more traditional boosters and alumni who slipped kids sacks of money in the past. Maybe the first step is hiring some actual investigators that have the correct experience required to dig to the bottom of the issues out there.....instead of a bunch of former professors and department heads who have no idea how to uncover criminal activity. If I were Miles Brand, the question I'd be asking this morning is "How does ESPN find out every detail of this and our investigation finds nothing?". The appearance that the general public is getting is that USC is a "sacred cow" of the NCAA and won't get hammered no matter what they do. Miles needs to at the least learn from the last 2 years at USC and figure out a better way to deal with these issues.