What do the following players have in common? Reggie Bush, Terelle Pryor, Mariuce Clarett, Peter Warrick, Maurikce Pouncey, Cam Newton, Rhett Bomar, Lawrence Phillips and to make it interesting – O.J Mayo

Interestingly, they all have several things in common – they were all prized recruits – all, except Mayo, touched or have been within a win of the national championship trophy and all have or will leave their team in worse shape than when they arrived.

I’m sure you expect this diatribe to steer towards the familiar road of “The Case For Paying College Players” but it won’t. In fact, you can’t. The nuances of college sports and what make them great is exactly what prevents you from doing so. The fact remains however, a super star athlete, especially a superstar football player, at the college level is more often the fuse that ignites a negative PR bomb more than a “get over the hump to greatness” one.

Is USC better or worse off because of Reggie Bush? (google images)

I recently finished reading Tarnished Heisman – How Reggie Bush Turned His Last Year At USC to a Six Figure Job and got to thinking, do I really want my favorite team to get a player like that? The quick answers is yes. All college football fans are glued to their TV and computer for national signing day. Short of our bowl game, it’s the biggest day of the year.

What ranking we achieve by the recruitment review services is as much of a bragging point with our rivals as our record and/or bowl game finish. With each star that our recruits receive, more hope springs for the following 4 years. A thought out answer tells us a different story however.

Are USC fans glad that Reggie Bush is considered a Trojan? Will his number be retired? When you thought of Auburn a year ago, what came to mind versus what you think of now? ( Crimson Tide fans please refrain from answering this one – you skew my point ) Is it coincidence that post Bush, USC have lost their dominance? If so, what about Phillips at Nebraska? What about Pouncey at Florida? Clarett at OSU? What about the glaring post Warrick years at FSU?

Don’t get me wrong, there are several superstars that are never caught up in these media storms – Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, etc. But if you look at the averages, you can’t deny that the greatest teams are typified by a crescendo of winning years leading to utter dominance, then severe drop off.

It’s not because the teams can’t replace the talent, it’s because of the shock wave felt once their gone, both from a media standpoint and a game plan standpoint. You never wondered if Bush was going to get his yards every game but when Joe McNight took over the starting RB job ( McNight was also the #1 recruit in the nation when he came out of high school)

I doubt the other team had a defense, blitz package and spy designed specifically for him from the first play of the game. Players like these draw attention from the opposing defensive coordinator just as much as they do from ESPN‘s Game Day. The fact is, superstars make the other players around them better just as hitters benefit from batting behind Pujols, Cris Carter benefitted from the arrival of Randy Moss and (insert Jordan / Pippen, Kobe / Shaq, Magic / Jabbar reference here)

Adding to the headaches of departed stars are the pitfalls they often fall in to while at their university. All the aforementioned players had significant stories of misconduct to explain away, some of which added to the challenge of replacing them because of the imposed NCAA sanctions.

Replacing a star is hard enough, replacing a controversial star is impossible. Without Bush, USC would likely have won their national championship behind Lendale White and the stable of running backs they enjoyed. With Bush, they lost scholarships , the best recruiter in the pacific time zone, a Heisman Trophy, a percentage of their fans and the respect of college fans across the country. (They got Lane Kiffin back though!)

Lastly – We all know how much the NCAA hates cheaters…once their caught. ( Pre-conviction, the NCAA is rather fond of the revenues brought in by top-tier teams that dominate) Their unrelenting pursuit of improper benefits is second only to John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted in regards to “hunting down the bad guys.”

The NCAA is this strict because anything less than severe punishment of any impropriety is a swing in the direction of college football being a business ( which it is) and they can’t have that. By trumpeting the “passion of the game” and purity of college athletics” their coffers stay full while they 18-22 year olds kill each other in the weight room and on the field for the glorious payment of free tuition, room and board and food. And for the really good teams, there are goodie bags of portable DVD players and sweatshirts at the bowl game but you better not sell them or you’ll be expelled!

I root for my favorite college team with true passion and live and die with the scoreboard on Saturdays in the fall. I, as much as any fan, have my favorite players on the team and they are often the players scoring the most points, making the most tackles and featured in an expose by Erin Andrews.

With that said, I fear the day that my team gets a true top-level player that can change the outcome of a game by himself. The more media attention we receive, first place recruiting votes we garner and appearances at the Heisman ceremony we have, the closer we are to the dark days of “rebuilding.” Can you hear me post Gino Toretta Miami fans? Ok, ok…post Charles Woodson Michigan fans…no? Post Peyton Manning Tennessee fans?

With the recent news of several college football players, including former Florida offensive lineman Maurkice Pouncey and UNC potential All-American DT Marvin Austin taking part in a party in Miami that was hosted (or at least partially financed) by a sports agent, it made me wonder why we are not hearing more about the truly guilty party–the sports agency responsible for the party itself.

In nearly every case in which money, suits, hotels and plane tickets are illegally given to amateur athletes, the agents or “runners” for the sports agencies that dispense the money and gifts are not even an after thought.  We instead criticize the 18-22 year old who often comes from little to no money, for accepting these gifts.

While I am not making a case for these student-athletes to accept money and gifts while they are supposed to be protecting their amateur status, the media and the NCAA are too enthralled with what is truly the secondary issue.

What is happening to the agencies and individuals who are guilty of a range of illegal activities including fraud, bribery and at least in the case of Reggie Bush, extortion.  In Bush’s well-documented case, his parents allegedly moved into a beautiful, furnished home in the Los Angeles area that was financed by a sports agency.

While Reggie Bush is still facing the music from his USC days, sports agents like Mike Ornstein are a mere afterthought when it comes to any wrong-doing (google images)

The major reason the entire story was leaked is because Bush spurned that particular agency and signed with another one at the conclusion of his NCAA career.  Do the names Michael Michaels, Lloyd Lake and Mike Ornstein ring a bell?  How many times have their names been mentioned in the past six months, which has been loaded with media coverage on Bush, USC and the scandal involved?  That’s because the media and the NCAA are not talking about them.  Their focus, rather, has been on the student-athletes.  If Michaels, Lake and Ornstein have been mentioned at  all, I must have missed it, and given the website I write for, I follow college sports as much as anyone.

Still wondering who those individuals are?  They are the marketing agents from two separate sports agencies that tried to woo Bush into signing with them.  Michaels and Lake did so by financing Bush’s family’s living quarters, among other things.

When Bush chose Ornstein instead of them, Michaels and Lake promptly sued Bush.  The grounds on which the law suit existed is beyond hysterical.  Basically, Michaels and Lake improperly paid a college athlete and his family and extorted them so that Bush would sign with their agency.  When that didn’t happen, they tried to take Bush to court.  I don’t exactly have any sympathy for them.  The only way Michaels and Lake could be more corrupt is if the money they were providing the Bush family was laundered from a drug lord.

Ornstein and his associates allegedly provided suits, hotel stays and weekly payments of $1500 to the Bush family, and he was caught on tape saying the gifts given to Bush and his family were “loans.”  Ornstein also claimed that he had no knowledge that these “loans” were a violation of NCAA rules and guidelines.

I never went to law school, and I have not gone through any of the certification requirements to be a sports agent, but even I know that when you pay an athlete based on his or her talents, you can call it whatever you want…an I.O.U. a loan or anything else; that effectively makes that athlete a professional because he/she is getting paid in some capacity because of performance on the field or court.

Still, some way, somehow, all of the attention in the NCAA investigation has Bush, USC and the coaching staff as the unethical and repulsive individuals that either accepted gifts or turned a blind eye to it.  All the negative attention focused on what truly is the result of a huge problem.  Unfortunately, our focus has not been on the cause of the problem.

When the NCAA unleashed their stiff sanctions against USC, they simply acknowledged the symptom and not the individuals who are really the corrupt ones.

I’m sick of hearing about what the NCAA plans to do to make an example of USC.  What are we doing to the agents providing all of these gifts and temptations, all the while, knowing they are engaging in illegal activity?  I don’t care how ethical you are–if you come from a poverty-stricken community and you are twenty years old, and someone offers your family a better place to live and some spending cash, you would be a hypocrite to say you wouldn’t at least consider it.

For Bush, his credibility is shot and his family is embarrassed.  For Pouncey, his Florida team may be forced to forfeit their Sugar Bowl victory and potentially lose scholarships, and for Austin, it is being reported that he will likely be suspended for his entire senior season, which could cost him millions of dollars in the NFL Draft next spring.

The agents, on the other hand, will quietly wait until this latest scandal blows over, and they will attempt to buy their next new crop of young clients.  And they will face limited to no consequences for ruining the lives of these young athletes.  The example that needs to be set should be targeted at the agencies who allow this to happen.

Orstein, Michaels and Lake should be banned from attending Pop Warner football games, let alone high school and college games after the level of unprofessionalism and lack of ethics they have shown.  A second violation from an agency should be grounds to shut the agency down all together.

Unfortunately, unless something drastically changes, the NCAA and the media will continue to hold our 18-22-year old athletes to an extraordinarily higher standard of character, ethics and integrity than the grown men and women who are giving their all to deceive and compromise the student-athletes we should be protecting.

This article is an attempt to shed more light on the actual crooked individuals and plead for stiffer, more stringent penalties for the corruption.  So far, the media and NCAA have failed miserably.