OPINION

By Mike DeCourcy

updated 6:53 p.m. ET May 13, 2009

Mike DeCourcy

There isn't a whole lot about O.J. Mayo's one season with the Southern California Trojans that is easy to believe. He averaged 20.7 points and 3.3 assists, and shot 40.9 percent from 3-point range. Sporting News named him all-freshman and the Pac-10 chose him to its all-conference first team. There is documentation to support all of that. The rest?

• Lots of papers printed the story Trojans coach Tim Floyd told about how one Rodney Guillory walked into his office and asked, before USC had made any serious recruiting overtures, if he'd like to have Mayo play for his team. Reporters wrote it because Floyd was a credible source and it was a great tale, but did anyone really buy that?
• The NCAA approved Mayo's eligibility to compete as a freshman with the Trojans, essentially certifying him as an amateur athlete. Did that ever compute?
• Now, former sportswriter Louis Johnson has alleged Floyd handed Guillory an envelope containing $1,000 — presumably as a reward for keeping Mayo on track to attend USC — on a busy Southern California street that is almost within walking distance of the UCLA campus. Seriously?

It's hard to locate much innocence in the whole Mayo-goes-to-college saga, but it's even more challenging to find some truth. It's easy to spot the moral to the story, though: Colleges and their coaches take a substantial risk if they merely close their eyes, toss their recruits' amateurism issues at the NCAA and force the organization to determine whether the players can compete. Even if the NCAA initially approves, there still can be repercussions.

After Mayo spent his one season with the Trojans, leading them to a 21-12 record and an NCAA Tournament appearance (a first-round loss), Johnson told ESPN's Outside The Lines program that Guillory had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to deliver Mayo to an agent and Guillory had shared some of that bounty with Mayo while he was a college student. Right there, USC was harangued by the media for failing to keep a close watch on Mayo, even though the clothes and flat-screen TV he allegedly was given were standard-issue in many college dorms.

The USC basketball program already was under investigation regarding those charges when Johnson threw an accelerant on a burning fire with the payoff charges against Floyd -- which Johnson has repeated to federal investigators and the NCAA before revealing them to reporters from Yahoo! Sports. And whether or not the allegations make sense, whether or not they're true, Floyd has become engulfed by those flames. His career will be profoundly impacted.

"It's like the lottery. It's a dollar and a dream," said Marc Isenberg, whose book Money Players is a guide for young athletes dealing with issues of amateurism and professionalism. "These are the program-changers, and it's very difficult to turn your back on these types of players — knowing that if you don't take them, somebody else will.

"These guys have an artificial market value of zero and a true value of something greater. Even if we want them to be amateurs and we want them to follow the rules, the underground economy is going to kick in."

It is not easy for any program recruiting from the top of the recruiting lists to find prospects that are entirely unspoiled, but particular players are considered by coaches to be almost radioactive. It's not hard for the public to discern which players fit that description. When multiple schools withdraw from recruiting a McDonald's All-American or an elite prospect has a hard time finding a school that will take him, it's fairly obvious.

There were people at UCLA who wondered if they'd done the right thing in excusing themselves from the pursuit of 6-11 forward Renardo Sidney a few months back. The Bruins' concerns got a strange sort of validation when the rival Trojans, even after gaining his commitment, passed on signing him.

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Kansas coach Bill Self looked pretty smooth when he put the pursuit of Lance Stephenson on hold until the NCAA could determine whether the star New York wing — subject of an Internet documentary called Born Ready — would be eligible. Immediately afterward, the coaching change at Memphis made elite wing Xavier Henry of Oklahoma City available. KU signed him and exited the pursuit of Stephenson.

It once seemed as though Southern California and Floyd didn't have much to lose in signing Mayo. If the NCAA cleared him, the Trojans would have themselves a fabulous scoring guard. He wouldn't even be on campus for a year before leaving for the NBA, which wouldn't leave much time for things to go wrong. If the NCAA said no, well, it's not as though the Trojans would have missed on a similar player to take him. There are only so many Mayos in a decade of college basketball, let alone one recruiting class.

All that seemed like a pretty safe plan when Mayo arrived on the USC campus bearing the NCAA's stamp of approval. Now it's apparent those 20 points a game carried a steep price, one way or the other.

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