Open Mic: Why College Hoops is Doomed

I wish I was as creative as Don McClean and could write an "American Pie"-esque song about the day college basketball died, but instead I can only express the fateful day in words.

The day college basketball died was the day Louis Johnson appeared on ESPN's Outside the Lines and calmly stated that OJ Mayo had been receiving improper benefits from sports agents while he was still playing amateur basketball for USC.

To be honest, it was surprising, but it didn't shock me by any means.

OJ Mayo had blinders on since he was in the sixth grade. Ever since the hype machine on Mr. Mayo started rolling back in grade school, no one expected Mayo to even attend college, since the NBA was waiting for him.

The thing is, I don't blame Mayo. He is an underprivileged 22-year-old kid, and frankly, who wouldn't enjoy those gifts if they were living in Southern California and the only thing on your mind was where you would fall in the lottery.

I don't blame the agents. The business of sports agencies is a ruthless business and everybody is trying to get ahead. They broke rules of course, but if they don't want to go bankrupt or lose their jobs, they need to sign high-profile clients like the OJ Mayos and the Greg Odens of the world.

I blame the coaches, the athletic directors, the institutions themselves, and of course, the NCAA.

Sports are a $200 billion industry, and college basketball is a big and growing part of that hefty sum. Pageantry and Lore are being eschewed in favor of the almighty dollar. Very few schools have kept their gym names the same without signing with a sponsor.

Louisville is in the midst of changing their gym's name from Freedom Hall to favor of a sponsored name. Some schools, such as Villanova, don't play their conference games in their home gym anymore. Instead, they use the 76ers home court, the Wachovia Center, in order to drive revenue.

In the case of OJ Mayo, the administration and the NCAA should be ashamed of themselves. USC is one of the premier academic institutions in the entire country. OJ Mayo was a high school student with a laundry list of red flags, including the fact he changed high schools three times!

Yet, the admissions board, Tim Floyd, and the rest of the administration was conscious of the fact that with Mayo's star power on the team, the basketball program's profile would be raised. The attraction of seeing Mayo play would put fans in the seats.

I have serious doubts that Mayo had the type of college resume that would have excited any school, let alone USC. But in today's world of college athletics, coaches and athletic directors lose their jobs if they don't gamble on high-risk-high-reward players like Mayo.

In some places, shreds of dignity still remain. Duke and North Carolina are both hallowed grounds for college basketball tradition, and they graduate a lot of their players.

Stanford and UCLA are both great colleges with rich histories, and there have been no off-the-court incidents in recent memory.

But these are places of relics, remnants of what college basketball used to be. Now basketball, just like football, is all business.

Rivals.com and Scout.com begin hyping athletes once they reach puberty. Agents, sneaker representatives, and UAA coaches are all looking to capitalize on and abuse their relationships with young players who don't know any better.

With this type of behavior going on when these kids are still in their early teens, no one should be surprised that allegations of improper benefits still arise so often.

But just as McLean lamented the loss of Buddy Holly and music, the sports world is lamenting the loss of collegiate sports.