Recruiting a Cesspool of Sleaze, Scum

It just doesn't stop, with these slimeballs. The whole Tim Floyd story just slips and slides right off the page. Floyd, the USC basketball coach, is accused of giving $1,000 to get stud recruit O.J. Mayo a few years ago.

Another coach, another envelope of cash. But did you see the details?

Because we keep getting more examples of dirty coaches, but then we shake our heads and ignore, basically, what went into making that sausage.

I had to sharpen two pencils and make a flow chart to follow the dollars -- alleged dollars -- to grasp this Floyd case.

In the end a guy who apparently is a hanger-on for a runner, or street agent, says Floyd gave that runner the money in an effort to steer Mayo, a high school kid at the time, to come to USC. That same hanger-on says the runner received between $200,000 and $250,000 to steer Mayo to an official agent.

That's an awful lot of layers of sleaze. And the question that sticks out is this:

Exactly how many people get their hands on our kids?

"The short answer is, as many as possible,'' said Dave Thompson, a former NCAA investigator.

And I haven't even mentioned the hands of coaches in the AAU, a once-proud organization that has become another layer of sleaze.

"If you go back to when these kids are 10, 11, 12 years old,'' Thompson said. "From that time, if we had perfect knowledge of kids prior to their enrollment in college, whether they've gotten some benefit, gift or discount or service based on their athletic ability, that would break NCAA amateur legislation.

"There are all kinds of people knocking on the door with shoes, money, gifts, whatever.''

The shoe companies. I haven't mentioned their hands.

When Floyd recruited Mayo, he reportedly never got the kid's phone number. Imagine that. It was a deal cut with a go-between.

"In the old days, there were a kid's high school coach and the parents," said Thompson, who wanted to be clear that he's not talking about USC. "Now, sometimes there are three or four different layers of people a coach has to get through just to get to talk to the kid or the parents.

"And the coach has all kind of rules about how to talk to them, when they can talk to them. There are going to be some coaches who say, 'To hell with this phone call rule. I'm going to who I want whenever I want and make sure no one catches me.' "

So it's the system's fault, and colleges and college coaches are just thrust into it?

Hah! They are just as dirty. It's the world they live in.

Well, in some cases, that's not true. Last year, I told Illinois basketball coach Bruce Weber that this is a dirty business and he's too nice for it. He's letting it run him over.

"I take that as a compliment,'' he said. "The part maybe I'm not as good at is what you said -- getting involved with people around a kid. That, I don't feel comfortable with. If that's a negative, then in a way I'm proud of it. It may also hurt us in the long run."

Of course, Weber has landed some big-time recruits since then. He also started recruiting 14-year-olds.

Weber had lost out on getting Eric Gordon, who had given his word to play for Illinois. Then, Indiana hired Kelvin Sampson from Oklahoma, where he had been busted for making 233 impermissible recruiting phone calls. But see? Indiana knew what it was getting.



Sampson stole Gordon away, but eventually was busted for more bad calls, and is out now.

USC should have known better than to let Floyd go after Mayo. The kid already was connected to the runner, Rodney Guillory, a street agent who had been fingered by the NCAA before.

Red ... flag.

On top of that, USC was already in trouble for its dealings with Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush, who apparently had an agent and plenty of family gifts while in college. If I look back through my flow chart, I believe the details on Bush came out -- credit to Yahoo! Sports-- because a hanger-on, a wannabe agent, was thinking he was going to be in on the big bucks when Bush signed with his company out of college. When that deal fell through, that first layer of sleaze was upset that he had lost out, and burned everyone.

That seems to be pretty close to what happened with Mayo, according to Yahoo! and the Los Angeles Times.

Louis Johnson, the hanger-on, allegedly drove Guillory, the runner charged with steering Mayo to USC. Johnson told the media, and the feds, that he drove Guillory to a Beverly Hills cafe where Floyd was waiting, let Guillory out and circled the block. When he got Guillory again, he had an envelope with a thousand dollars in $100 bills. Guillory, according to Johnson, said Floyd had given him the money.

Why is Johnson snitching now? Just a guess: He didn't get his cut.

The first layer of sleaze seems to be these street agents attaching themselves to 10-year olds.

"It's usually someone who already has a relationship with the family, the kid,'' Thompson said. Then, an agent finds out who that [street agent] is.''

The agent connects with the street agent. NCAA rules prohibit college athletes from having agents.

You can blame Sonny Vaccaro for professionalizing youth sports. He's the longtime shoe marketing guy who ran basketball all-star camps at different times for Nike, Adidas and Reebok. That's where agents and scouts and coaches and street agents all came together around kids.

But maybe blame is the wrong word. Vaccaro, who is in Greece, and didn't return messages for this column, can paint a picture this way:

A poor, inner-city kid suddenly is invited to these camps and AAU teams. His game develops in a way it never would have otherwise, by playing against the nation's best players. Someone in the game is looking out for him.

Possible?

"Some people out there are trying to do the best thing for the kid or parents, some aren't,'' Thopmson said. "Some are going it for selfish motives. Great AAU coaches out there really are interested in the kid and sometimes they help protect a kid from agents.

"The fact there's some NCAA rule that prevents it might be detrimental to the kid.''

Maybe so, but there is too much slime there, too much self-interest, too many hands on these kids.

A few years ago, star recruit Michael Beasley went to Kansas State. His former AAU coach was hired as an assistant at K-State, where he now makes $420,000 a year, according to Rivals.com, more than the entire three-man staffs at Ohio State, Washington State, Wisconsin.

Face it, it was a payoff for delivering Beasley.

So what should happen to USC? I'm thinking burial.

If USC is found guilty on football and basketball, then how about cutting half the scholarship for five years? No postseason. Take away the national football title it won and ban Floyd from coaching anywhere in the NCAA for 10 years.

The punishments the NCAA usually gives do no good, and I hope that's not because it's protecting the big-time, big-revenue schools. How many layers can there be?

If the NCAA really cares, then this could be a good time and place to start a real fight and send a real message: Hands off our kids.