First Reggie Bush, now O.J. Mayo. Money flows easily in Los Angeles...

Story by By Jason Cole and Charles Robinson
Yahoo! Sports
May 12, 2009

LOS ANGELES--NCAA investigators appear to be building a case to show the
University of Southern California has demonstrated a lack of institutional
control and failure to monitor some aspects of its football and men's basketball
programs, multiple sources interviewed in the probe told Yahoo! Sports.

The NCAA's investigation began in April 2006 and intensified after Yahoo! Sports
reported allegations of improper benefits received by former USC running back
and 2005 Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and his family. The NCAA probe has
widened to include former Trojans basketball star O.J. Mayo, who played for USC
in the 2007-2008 season and led the team to the NCAA tournament. Yahoo! Sports
has learned the NCAA investigation has also come to encompass various facets of
USC's compliance structure and the upper reaches of the school’s athletics
department.

"I think [lack of institutional control] would be a very accurate interpretation
of the angle the NCAA took in questioning," said attorney David Murphy, who
represents former Mayo confidant Louis Johnson. Johnson was a central figure in
an ESPN report in May 2008 chronicling more than $200,000 in alleged improper
benefits received by Mayo and Rodney Guillory, a sports agency recruiter.
Johnson has been interviewed by the NCAA on two occasions, including one
six-hour session in June of 2008 and another one-hour teleconference this past
Friday regarding his latest allegation--that USC men's basketball coach Tim
Floyd made a cash payment of at least $1,000 to Guillory in February 2007.

Asked if there was any way that USC could not have known of the financial
relationship between Mayo and Guillory, Murphy said: "It is humanly impossible
for them to not have known."

That sentiment mirrors statements by Lloyd Lake, who has alleged he helped give
Bush and Bush’s family nearly $300,000 in benefits when Bush was still at USC.
Lake has filed a civil suit against Bush over the alleged benefits. Lake told
Yahoo! Sports in 2008: "People at USC knew. How could they not? We were in the
locker room. Some of their [coaches] were there when we partied with him. They
saw the things we had [given] him."

http://tinyurl.com/USCncaaMayoBush