Until the NCAA Toughens Up, Expect More Mayos

There has been a lot of hand-wringing going on in the past few weeks after accusations surfaced that O.J. Mayo was being paid by a street agent while playing both high school basketball and during his one and only season at The University of Southern California.

Here's the reaction to the Mayo news from one head coach with years of recruiting experience at big-time programs: "Do people understand that Mayo was probably one of 400 kids being paid?" he said. "This isn't exactly man bites dog stuff."

The guess here is that the coach is taking a wild guess when he throws out the number 400 but the larger issue is this: Ask anyone in college athletics about how widespread the "taking care," of players has become and they'll all tell you the same thing: it's an epidemic.

Don't misunderstand: this isn't about Swiss bank accounts or cars or even cash. Oh sure, on occasion it is about cars or cash but most of the time it is far more subtle than that. A parent or guardian or "friend of the family," suddenly becomes very close to the program. Maybe they get a job courtesy of a booster or maybe they get a really good deal on a very nice house. It happens in so many different ways at so many different programs that it is impossible to keep track and just as impossible to actually catch people.

But why is it so hard to catch people if it is so widespread?

It starts with "The Code."

There probably isn't a big-time coach out there -- now that Bob Knight has retired -- who doesn't have a skeleton of some kind in his recruiting closet. The most honest comment made about the state of college basketball by any coach may have come several years ago when Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski was trying to defend the actions of his pal Mike Jarvis, then the coach at St. John's, who had a big-time player (Eric Barkley) in trouble with the NCAA.

"The truth is there is no program in college basketball including my own that could withstand this kind of scrutiny," Krzyzewski said. "People should lay off of Mike."

Krzyzewski had the first part right, the second part wrong. People should not have laid off of Mike they should have gone after him and everyone else to find out just how accurate Krzyzewski's comment was.

But Krzyzewski isn't going to start turning people in. Neither is anyone else. The Code is simple: if you cheat you're just doing your job; if you call someone out for cheating you are ostracized in the coaching community. Years ago, Bruce Pearl, then an assistant coach at Iowa, turned a tape over to the NCAA in which a player told him that Illinois had offered him benefits to go to school there. Even though the Pearl tape did not lead to Illinois going on probation -- other violations during that time period did -- Pearl was a man without a country for years even though he was one of the bright young minds in the game.

Coaches constantly make off-the-record accusations to reporters about violations, whether they be about someone taking SAT's for a player (have you noticed that no one ends up being a Prop-48 anymore?) or getting someone a job or just flat out giving them something. A few years ago after a column about a prominent coach, I received a phone message from one of the coach's closest friends. "Why didn't you ask him," the message said, "to tell you how (star player's) mother got that nice townhouse she's living in?"

Sadly, the media's hands are tied unless people go on the record. Coaches are more than willing to talk off the record but they won't name any names on the record. Another favorite is, "you should see that kid's transcript." Okay fine, let's see the transcript. "Can't do it, it's a violation of the Buckley amendment."