I'm hardly an expert when it comes to this issue.
There weren't highlights of me playing ball in high school on the local news, much less on ESPN. Upon graduating high school, I wasn't sought after by every Division I school in the country with a scholarship in hand.
Finally, once I decided upon a school, there wasn't a press conference, and said school didn't expect large amounts of money to come in on my account—just the bills for tuition and books.
Despite that, I was able to observe, for a time, this phenomenon while attending the University of Illinois.
As a sophomore, our Illini basketball team rose to prominence as they made it all the way to the championship game before losing to the North Carolina Tarheels. Along the way, just about everyone remotely associated with the team became overnight super-celebrities.
While athletes on campus were already worshipped, it became very obvious that year how these guys, ranging in age from 18-22, became viewed as gods walking amongst us mere mortals.
Students would drop everything they were doing at the time to get a picture taken with said athlete, and if they didn't have a camera they would at least try to get an autograph—anything so that they can brag to their friends back at the dorm. The team received nightly exposure on both local and national sports stations, praising the team while fattening the schools pocketbook by garnering constant exposure.
As observed by many incidents that have occurred over the years at a vast number of schools, a good percentage of these "student-athletes" end up doing just enough to make the grade, thanks in large part to the help of the hundreds of tutors, "online classes," or having leisure studies as a major.
And last but not least, don't forget the groupies.
The point is that college, for the student-athlete, is the ultimate ego trip. If your head hasn't been inflated enough from being the best prep athlete in high school, college will certainly up the ante.
If the "problems" with celebrity culture were so prominent in a tiny college town like Champaign, it's hard to envision what it must be like in a place like Los Angeles, especially on such a storied campus as USC, where the spotlight always shines.
Picture it, the exposure, the women, the guaranteed money coming after your one year—it's no wonder the academics and morals fall to the wayside.
Of course, when those incidents do occur, the media and the NCAA are the first to jump all over it. Suddenly, guys like OJ Mayo become the poster boy of all that's wrong with the NCAA—when in reality, he's just an 18-year old kid that did what any other 18-year old kid would do if they were in his position and had his talents.
Furthermore, it's hypocritical for the NCAA to go after USC for bringing in a guy that every other team in the country wanted
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