THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Shark Week Continues

Privately, we hoped that in our day off (done with school woot!), the O.J. Mayo mess would calm down, and some other story would take over the headlines. We weren’t alone - in a small act of sanity, Ben Taylor at the Daily Bruin says, “Um, don’t all of you have anything better to cover, like college athletes dying in practice?”

NO! Silly us. Each minute factual revelation merely served to throw more chum in the water, which inevitably leads to nastiness.

On Tuesday, the attacks centered on Mayo and the USC leadership. As the story ages however, like a fine wine, more subtle variables gain strength to create layers of flavor for the well-heeled to snoot about.

Signal to Noise points out that USC may pay a price in recruiting long before sanctions come down. His local paper says Mayo has daddy issues (like any good southern boy). Wilbon says Mayo is a sweet kid caught up in the dirty system of agents. DeCourcy over at the SN goes a step further and says the entire sport of basketball is broken. (Though DeCourcy’s piece is less “subtle flavor brought out by age” and more “what happens when you toss the bottle against the wall in disgust, because the world is death.” Let it all out, Mike. Why, oh why did Celeste leave you and take both le chat and all the zigerettes?)

But at least O.J. and his former compadres won’t lose a high school title over this mess.

We’ve been asked our opinion, but we don’t view this as a forum for our “take” - we offer commentary only to be funny or make a valid point, and we’re so sick of this topic we’re not sure we can do either. We’ll try better tomorrow.

We now move onto to non-O.J. topics - but first, twins.

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Perhaps an ill-advised cover shoot.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Inconceivable!

Pop quiz to start your weeks, ladies and gentlemen - and we don’t want to hear any complaining, because if you’ve been reading the assigned material, this one will be easy: Which of the following post-season events, all related to one Ovinton J’Anthony Mayo, was the most predictable? Was it …

A) His decision to go pro after one year at USC?
B) An investigation by tWWL revealing Mayo received thousands of dollars worth of benefits from a sports agency’s middleman?
C) The post-investigation denial of wrongdoing by Mayo?
D) The hand-wringing column from Pat Forde decrying the lack of ethics by Mr. Mayo and USC?

If you answered (D), congratulations. Clearly, the most predictable of all these events was the column, for the Louisville Loudmouth is like a well-oiled machine, students - steely and efficient to be sure, but deadly and fear-inducing. Our guess is that Forde wrote yesterday’s column three years ago, while Mayo was still a Appalachian lad, and simply edited to include the relevant facts in record. Had nothing newsworthy happened, he would have found a reason to post the column anyway.

If you answered anything but (D), for shame. With all the evidence we have about the NCAA’s successful oversight of ethical conduct (99% of athletes haven’t been caught yet!), that O.J. might receive illicit benefits was … well, we’ll let Vizzini explain:

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
No Wonder He’s Recruiting Middle Schoolers

Last week, we noted that while transfer #1 may be ignored as a fluke for any program, transfer #2 can be properly viewed as a sign of trouble brewing. (We noted this in reference to our own alma mater, so maybe red flags jumped up too early, but still.) We control-c, control-p this advice again today as Kentucky announced two player transfers over the weekend.

Marginal players seeking greener pastures and more playing time? Perhaps. But given Billy Gillespie’s youth-oriented recruiting strategy - with commitments for every class through the next presidential administration now on the books - perhaps these gentlemen wanted to get out of Lexington before being replaced by zygotes.

It’s Only Hubris If You Can’t Back It Up

After a week unintentionally filled with Carolina-fueled stories, apparently our subconscious mind felt it necessary to offer equal time to the Blue Devils, which inevitably leads to much silliness. Case in point - a beautifully homer-tastic look by DBR at the so-called Duke Curse, in the wake of Huggy Bear’s slip-and-fall at the Greensboro airport last week.

We applaud the research efforts of DBR and their affiliates. However, tracking a would-be curse on each team that eliminates your squad in the tournament sounds like a more academic approach to the old standby chant for fans of the losing team:

Re-defining “big” in Durham.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Hey, Wojo? Maybe You Should Sit This One Out.

Coach K’s recent recruiting failures with big men - see Patrick Patterson and Greg Monroe - have sparked a chicken-and-egg argument. Are the trees not interested because no Duke big man has succeeded at the next level, from Jay Bilas to Christian Laettner to Sheldon Williams with every Cherokee Parks in between? Or is it because the coaching triumvirate of Dawkins, Collins and Wojociechowski (most recently in charge of post players) had no idea how to coach bigs?

Consider the egg scrambled - in the wake of Dawkins’ departure for Palo Alto, Coach K hired former Blue Devil forward Nate James to fill his spot on the bench. What remains to be seen is if this will have any discernible impact, as James comes in with no coaching experience. In fact, this resume looked better suited for reality television:

After graduating from Duke and playing in the Carolinas Basketball League, James spent parts of five seasons playing in Bosnia, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Poland and Russia.

While some might consider the career a world history tour, James didn’t exactly praise the vagabond experience. Instead, he talked about eating nothing but rice and noodles — with chopsticks only — in Japan for several months; playing in a freezing gym in Bosnia; and having to eat cow tongue in Russia.

So, future Blue Devil recruits, know what Duke can now offer. Even if your playing experience can’t get you in the NBA and your Duke degree can’t get you a job, Coach James can help you parlay your experiences in Durham into a spot on The Amazing Race.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Something is Afoot in the District

Player movements galore in our nation’s capital yesterday, as Karl Hobbs kicked two players off GW’s team. Role players, true, but two players nonetheless from a team that only managed nine wins last season. Which makes one wonder what “certain expectations” they failed to meet to warrant dismissal, since one could argue that Hobbs and all of his charges failed to meet the basic “certain expectation” of finishing higher than next-to-last in the A-10.

Meanwhile, further into the snooty part of the Northwest Quadrant, a second potential starter transfers away from the Hoyas. With the announced transfer of Doc Rivers’ kid, Georgetown will be down to four returning players with any significant playing time. Greg Monroe better be really, really good, or JTIII will need to bust out celebrity dance moves again.

Theme music for this morning’s quick post, as we prepare for another ill-advised road trip:

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
More Schools That Couldn’t Fake Academic Achievement
Buzz around the interwebs continues to center on the APR ratings released yesterday. Rush the Court broke down the numbers in much greater detail than us, with some interesting findings:

1) Davidson had the best overall APR (a perfect 1000) amongst hoops programs, while Carolina had the highest amongst BCS programs. There is a safety school joke in here somewhere, but damned if we can find it.

2) The total list of teams suffering scholarship losses: Kansas State, Purdue, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New Mexico State take a hit of one scholly apiece, while Southern Cal and UAB will lose two apiece for their historic incompetence.

3) The ACC and the Big East had the highest conference APR averages. If that isn’t evidence of the worthiness of the APR as a measure of academic success, we’re not sure what is. (That, or Big Ten programs are even worse at finding decent educations for their players than we already suspect.)

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Fitting news for the day that we licked the stamp on the final exam of our academic career: the NCAA ratted out the college basketball programs with the same approach to academics as us. Forty-six Division I basketball programs failed to achieve a passing APR score 925 (because that’s a passing score that makes sense, no matter what the scale).

Many are only subject to a “public notice” penalty, which from all we can tell is somewhere between a few days in the stockades and the online equivalent of a wagging finger. Stephen Colbert approves.

But for a dozen or so schools, including a handful of teams from this year’s NCAA tournament, headlined by Tennessee, their low APR score means they will lose scholarships. The Vols will lose one free ride, which is convenient since they just booted two scholarship players from the team. No word on the other offenders. (We meant the other schools, but you didn’t know for a second there, did ya? Go Vols!)

Proudly, none of the institutions we have attended landed on the big list of fail - but for those that did, we offer the following as a public service announcement: