OJ Mayo is a liar and he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Of course he took gifts while he was at USC and probably before.
He’s off to the NBA to make millions. He could care less what happens to USC.
I don’t believe Reggie Bush or Darren McFadden either.
I certainly don’t believe him, but why should he tell the truth? Crime pays when it comes to professional sports, unfortunately.
When OJ Mayo was still in high school, I remember hearing the story about how he walked into Tim Floyd’s office and said “I want to come to USC,” though Floyd hadn’t even tried to recruit him. It made me suspicious at the time, and now we see the suspicions were probably warranted.
No, I don’t believe him, and I don’t believe any of this is news to USC. I’m sure this happens all the time in college sports, and that’s how it’s been for a long time.
I’m still curious as to where Lebron James’ high school Hummer came from.
Is that that mysterious? I thought it was well-known that his mother was able to get a loan because he was about to make a metric shit-ton of money.
Got it in one. She took out a loan against his future earnings.
Mayo took handouts. Bush probably did too. Everyone does.
In New Orleans, I lived with a guy who had played for a major collegiate program that has been sanctioned by the NCAA. He had played in Canada for a couple of years and had done OK with his money, but things weren’t going so well that he could sell the car some boosters had bought for him and buy a new one.
It’s hard to call not taking money “the high road” when everybody is making money off you except you.
FSU had Charlie Ward’s picture on its credit cards one year. Ward received nothing for the use of his image. All the player jerseys you might see, or the seats that are getting sold based on someone’s star power- they aren’t seeing a dime off that.
Add in a healthy dose of entitlement from a young age, add dozens of hangers-on looking to make a dime and the errand boys that run the gifts so that the big sleazes themselves don’t get their hands dirty, add the allure of free money and free stuff out the wazoo, add the fact that some sleaze is going to give your mama extra money every week so she can quit her second job… add all that and more and the temptation is understandable.
OJ Mayo is lying- of course he’s lying. He’s untouchable. It’s not going to affect his draft stock one bit, and if he does roll over and snitch, the school and the scumbags will each bury him in their own way, and either of those could have real consequences. But right now, he has nothing to gain and the potential to lose if he talks- so why talk? As it stands, not one thing will come of this.
It’s not true that the players get nothing. They get a free education. That’s the deal they agree to when they take the scholarships. There’s nothing unfair about it. The deal doesn’t change after they sign it. They don’t have to take the scholarships. They’re entitled to nothing beyond what they agree to.
Of course, they all take stuff anyway, but the excuse that they don’t draw salaries doesn’t wash with me. All of big time college athletics is corrupt. I don’t know why anyone is ever surprised by it. I think the only good solution is to create professional minor league systems for basketball and football.
I still have serious doubts about Lebron James, however. I can’t see how any bank would give Gloria James an 80k loan based on the future earnings of Lebron without a “second” guarantee. Gloria James was not exactly a good loan risk.
Obviously, Lebron was going to the NBA. But, there was a chance he could have been hurt. In fact, there were worries that someone would intentionally injure him in one of his games.
The only way this crap will ever end is if the pro sports leagues adopt a policy wherein players can be suspended without pay should they leave a trail of scandal and sanctions in their wake from their time in college.
What if they don’t want the “free” education? These high profile players could pay for that education 5x over if they were allowed the freedom to earn money any way they wanted, just like every non-athlete is allowed to do.
Unfortunately, for these big time athletes, college sports is the only functional place for them to hone the skills for their career. There is no effective minor league system, and they’re not allowed to join the league right out of high school.
What frustrates me about it is the idea that there is something “corrupt” about a student receiving a gift, or getting a loan to buy a car. AFAIC, as long as they are not asked to affect the outcome of a game, it’s nobody’s business whether or not they have money, or where the money came from.
I already said that there need to be more professional, minor league options where atheletes can earn a living while preparing for the big leagues. I agree, the lack of farm systems comparable to what exists for baseball is what forces so much fraud and corruption in college, but that doesn’t change the fact that they agree to what they agree to, fair or not. These gifts are the NCAA’s business and are prohibited because they have to (in theory anyway) prevent colleges and college boosters from effectively paying salaries to players disguised as gifts or loans.
I happen to disagree with this theory. I suppose the college shouldn’t pay the athlete directly (even though they already “pay” them with the scholarship) but what’s the harm in allowing a player to earn money in a side business? I would require any earnings to be reported, I think the skeevy nature of current booster payola is due mostly to the fact that it has to be kept secret. Let the big name athletes do some commercials or personal appearances, and make enough money to pay their way through school and put a few bucks in their family’s pockets.
Well, in hindsight, she was an excellent risk, cause I’d wager that the loan was paid off long ago. And I don’t think the Lebron thing belongs in this thread, cause he went straight to the NBA, so the NCAA rules have nothing to do with him.
That education thing sound good except that for most of them it is something to avoid. The university steers their valuable properties into simple classes. Most of them do not finish. Education just gets in the way. There are exceptions but most of the biggies will leave to start getting pay checks.
You make it sound like the colleges/universities are the good guys here.
They aren’t.
They induce kids with the promise of an education they have no intention of substantively providing, an education in which these kids wouldn’t be prepared to participate if the colleges actually did what they said they would.
Athletes in big-time programs have been shafted by their academic advisors (provided them by the school and instructed by the schools where to steer the kids), some to the point that they’ve been forced to drop out of school after their eligibility ended without even having earned a degree, since the advisors’ top priority is to keep the kids out of classes they can’t pass and out of classes that would interfere with practice.
Schools tell kids that they’re the way to the pros and entice kids with that. Then they use the kids up for their own institutional benefit. What they do is criminal and it is entirely unsurprising for a kid to get pissed off when everyone’s making money off him except him.
There’s plenty of culpability to go around, but the idea that the schools are blameless is absolutely untrue.
Does anyone really care?
Basically irrelevant. His stock was so high (and he was so young) that he could have suffered a catastrophic knee injury in his last high school game and still been a high first round pick, just on spec.
I’ve said many times, as a college professor, I still see athletes as the only students that potentially risk injury each time they perform their talent. They should get some compensation for the work they do for the school. A kid who’s an accounting whiz can get a summer job and get paid as much as the market (or a friend of their dad’s) will pay them.
There certainly is a need to regulate how athletes are compensated, but I think they should get something. I was a scholarship student (academic) - I got a free education with the only stipulation being that I maintain a 3.0 GPA. I could work or not work, major in any subject, and spend my weekends however I wished. Not always the case for college athletes.
I absolutely believe Mayo was paid. The stories about him as a recruit are legendary. And I think USC cheats in a way that other programs aren’t even close to. The NCAA is in a bind, because USC athletics brings in tons of cash and fans, so they don’t want to sanction them. But if USC was Northern Central Montana State, they’d have gotten the SMU-style death penalty twice over.
Here’s an idea: USC has to give its scholarships to SMU for five years!
Hippy Hollow hit home [and words starting with H for the rest of this] and said what I would have… especially the emphasis that most of these kids in Division I programs can’t work if they want to keep their scholarships - that includes most of summer for football
NYTimes article on the truth of most athletic scholarships
IME Mayo & Chris Webber & Bush famously gamed the system & that is enraging & wrong. Every year the vast majority of kids don’t.
My main complaint with the NCAA is the uneven way they mete out justice on the schools on these matters.