In the great circle of life known as the professional sports league calendar, we're about to follow up the crowning of the NBA champions with the ritual of the NBA draft.
Since next Thursday's draft will be draped with the usual turbocharged hype -- prime-time coverage on ESPN, incessant speculation about teams' picks, testimonials about the "maturity" of the college freshmen drafted in the first round -- it's only proper to remind ourselves in advance about the corruption at the heart of this process.
USC's men's basketball program, to take a hometown example, has lost its coach and may be sanctioned into near oblivion because of alleged violations of NCAA rules involving its onetime star O.J. Mayo.
Did I say onetime? I meant one-season. When USC recruited Mayo from his West Virginia high school for its Class of 2011, none seriously expected him to get within three years of graduation day as a USC student.
Mayo, like many other marquee college players, joined a three-part charade. USC stayed on the college basketball map for another year; the NBA aged a prospect in a college meat locker for a year so it could make believe it wasn't drafting a high school kid; and Mayo got a year to hone his competitive skills.
As my colleague Bill Dwyre has observed, the process is now so open it has a shorthand nickname -- "one and done."
Nine games into Mayo's college season, the pro scouts were already projecting where he would rank in the 2008 draft. The worst that anyone said about him was that he wouldn't be "the next coming of LeBron James." Well, who is? Mayo was picked third and had a terrific rookie year with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Can anybody really be shocked that in financial terms this arrangement was destined to come unstuck?
The NCAA is investigating whether thousands of dollars in cash and gifts were provided to Mayo at USC in violation of his, ahem, "amateur" standing, and if so, what the university and basketball Coach Tim Floyd knew about it.
The university and Floyd, who abruptly resigned last week, haven't commented. Mayo denied wrongdoing when the allegations first arose.
The university's NCAA issues are, so to speak, more than academic.
Men's basketball brought USC nearly $4.5 million in revenue during Mayo's year, not counting fans' booster club contributions and spending on SC sports gewgaws. That's a fraction of what the football team generates, but the basketball program was on the rise. It's now beclouded, and serious sanctions could do serious damage to USC's bottom line.
