Mike DeCourcy

There has become no more fragile entity in sports than the established college basketball program. It can fracture faster than a baseball bat struck from the wrong angle, than a hockey stick slashed by an opponent, than a locker room that invites Terrell Owens inside.

The Southern California Trojans as we've known them the past three seasons are no more. They might be back, but for a long while they will squirm along the hardwood trying to avoid being crushed by somebody's size 16 Nikes.

Coach Tim Floyd's sudden resignation Tuesday assures there will be almost nothing left of Southern Cal basketball by next season. Poor Dwight Lewis is stuck for another year, unless he wants to sit 12 months just to play one year somewhere else. Nearly everybody else who matters is gone to professional basketball ahead of schedule -- but, one might add, just in time.

The Trojans made the NCAA Tournament each of the past three seasons. Curiously, the one season in which they made a first-round exit was the one in which they were led by guard O.J. Mayo, whose introduction to the program became the catalyst for its sudden collapse.

Since he completed his season, charges developed that he'd been in violation of NCAA amateurism guidelines even before arriving on campus. Then, just a few weeks ago, came the fantastic allegation Floyd himself had handed an envelope stuffed with cash to one of Mayo's associates on a busy Beverly Hills street. As hard as that was to believe, Floyd never publicly breathed a word to refute the allegation. The longer he was silent, the more likely it was he would wind up unemployed.

As ugly as this is now, as much as it resembles the disintegration attendant to Kelvin Sampson's departure from Indiana, it could have been so much worse for so many more.

Several schools looked hard at Floyd to fill openings the past two springs. LSU wanted him a year ago, but he was loving life in Santa Monica too much to move. Memphis and Arizona definitely came after him this year. Arizona will tell you differently, that Sean Miller was the preferred choice all along. But Miller wasn't interested at first and became intrigued when the Wildcats made a second, stronger push -- after Floyd turned them down.

Floyd's departure also might lighten the burden for the USC football program, in hot water over allegations of NCAA violations involving former running back Reggie Bush. It should be clear by now a basketball coach at a football school can't allow his program to stumble into the NCAA's enforcement office, especially if there is concern the football program got there first.

About the same time the NCAA was fishing around Ohio State trying to figure out what was with running back Maurice Clarett earlier this decade, Buckeyes basketball coach Jim O'Brien informed athletic director Andy Geiger he'd made a payment of more than $6,000 to the family of a recruit in the war-ravaged country of Serbia. O'Brien allowed OSU to publicly demonstrate how committed it was to NCAA compliance; he was fired immediately.

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It's almost eerie how closely the USC circumstance parallels what happened at Ohio State. Star running back. Allegations of improper benefits. And here comes the basketball program to absorb most of the heat.

As dire as the circumstance will be in the immediate future, there are excellent basketball coaches out there who certainly would be interested in the position. The lure of living in Southern California and coaching in a facility as beautiful as the Galen Center will attract some genuine talents -- perhaps Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins, who grew up in the SoCal area and helped build the Orange into an NCAA championship program, or Mike Dunlap, such an integral part of Arizona's Sweet 16 success this past spring.

The next Southern Cal coach will suffer for a while, though. It takes time to reassemble the pieces of a program that has shattered.

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