In news that will surprise no one, another Trojan is going to jail:

A Compton jury on Wednesday found USC linebacker recruit Maurice Simmons guilty of two felonies and a misdemeanor in connection with a street robbery in March.

Simmons' codefendant, Lamont Lee Hall, was also found guilty. 

Simmons, a Compton Dominguez High graduate, had been charged with felony robbery, assault with a firearm and a misdemeanor charge of allowing someone to bring a gun into his car. He will be sentenced Aug. 28.

Instead of feeling sorry for the victim of the crime who was robbed and assaulted with a gun, Peetie is feeling sorry for his recruit:

USC Coach Pete Carroll called it "the most unfortunate news we could get for Maurice and for his family. We feel sorry for everything they have to go through."

In Peetie and SuC’s world the victims of TrOJan’s perpetrated crimes don’t matter. It is all about showing concern about the tragedy of not having an athlete available for the next game.

No one should celebrate a kid going to jail. It is sad for everyone involved. Still the way these jerks across town continue to show a total lack of perspective is disturbing but not shocking.

This will not probably surprise a lot of people considering who is coaching the Memphis Tigers.

Huge article out on FoxSports.com on Memphis Tigers. NCAA is investigating Calipari's program because of a phone call a Memphis booster (Fed Ex Ceo) made to Oseye, Gaddy a mother of a high profile recruit (who happened to be an employee of Fed Ex):

The call from Bronczek came earlier this month and lasted approximately 10 minutes. Oseye Gaddy also told FOXSports.com that she received the call just a few days after the family was contacted by Tigers coach John Calipari, who is actively recruiting Abdul Gaddy. Calipari was at a basketball camp Thursday and repeated attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.

Bronczek belongs to the exclusive 32-member Ambassador's Athletic Foundation, in which each member has donated at least $500,000 to the Memphis program and many have given in excess of $1 million.

He is a "representative of an institution's athletic interests" or a "booster" due to his involvement as a member of the Ambassador's Athletic Foundation — an agency that promotes an athletic program. Bronczek is also on the Tiger Athletic Advisory Board of Directors, which assists the athletic department in all aspects of fund raising.

"He's absolutely a booster, there's no question about it," Johnson said of Bronczek.

NCAA rules state that "a representative of athletic interests" is someone who has participated in or is a member of an agency or organization promoting the institution's athletics program or who has made financial contributions to the athletics department or to an athletics booster organization of that institution.

Rule 13.1.3.5.1 in the NCAA Division I Manual also states that "Representatives of an institution's athletics interests are prohibited from making telephonic communications with a prospective student-athlete or the prospective student-athlete's relatives or legal guardians."

"I wasn't aware of it and of course I'm concerned," Johnson said. "We try very hard because our basketball program is so high profile. The higher you go, the less wiggle room you have."

"Certainly I don't condone it," Johnson added. "But Dave's one of the real good ones. Oh yes, we'll absolutely look into it."

FedEx director of communications Maury Lane said of Bronczek: "Certainly he regrets the fact he put himself, the company and the university in a bad light. But he had the right intentions. His conversation was congratulatory."

Lane said that Bronczek was unaware of the rules, adding that Bronczek also indicated that Calipari had not urged him to make the call.

Sure Calipari had no idea.

Just like he had no idea when his star player - Marcus Camby  - was getting set up with hookers at UMass.

The Trojan Times published an article today with pictures of Reggie and OJ2, the two faces of Fig Tech. The Times reporter interviewed David Price, who is the NCAA "head of enforcement."

There were three parts of the article that I found telling.

The part about Brian Watkins (Lloyd Lake’s lawyer) saying NCAA is sitting on more information than him:

"The wealth of information they had, prior to even meeting with us, kind of shocked me," attorney Brian Watkins said. "They knew stuff we didn't even know."

So the NCAA has been sitting on more information than Bush’s adversary but it hasn’t done anything? Why?

The part about David Price talking about "institutional control" gives us a little peak into the mental make up of the NCAA bureaucrat:

Even if no one at USC provided extra benefits, the school could face penalties if investigators find a "lack of institutional control." The definition of institutional control is not as cut-and-dried as it is with other violations. Price talks about needing to "weigh the circumstances."

"The schools have to pay attention," he said. "They know what their kids are driving. They know where their kids are living."

But he cites a 1995-96 case in which former USC tailback Shawn Walters served a 12-game suspension for receiving extra benefits from a roommate who acted as a runner. The program was not punished.

"How in the world was the coach supposed to know that?" Price said. "You don't expect a coach to know everything a kid's doing 24 hours a day."

Can you feel David’s agony for Peetie?

Poor Peetie. All he wants to do is follow the rules. How in the world a coach like Peetie is supposed to know about this tawdry list when our Humanitarian is out curing AIDS and fighting hunger in Africa and fighting for human rights in Tibet?

David ends with this note of worry:

As the months stretch on, he says, "You shouldn't have the impression that the enforcement staff is impotent."

 I will leave all the long time BNers to come up with the punch line to respond to that.

COMEDY:

USC is planning on telling the NCAA it did not know of any improper activity between O.J. Mayo and an event promoter alleged to have given the basketball player $30,000 in cash and gifts, according to a Los Angeles Daily News report.

School officials said the NCAA might speak with the school this week, according to the report, and USC is preparing its initial defense, including telling the NCAA that it previously had banned the promoter, Rodney Guillory, from receiving tickets to Trojans games.

"Right now, we're just trying to weather the storm," a USC official said in the Daily News report.

***

The Daily News also reported that USC will emphasize to the NCAA that it had banned Guillory from receiving tickets to USC games in order to avoid any accusations of impropriety involving Mayo.

From the same ESPN article:

According to the Daily News, however, Guillory was seen often at the USC basketball offices, around the locker room, and at pickup games at the Galen Center, where Mayo played last summer.

The most amazing aspect of SuC dealing with its scandals is to see its officials spout this kind of cocomeme excuses probably knowing full well that everyone else can see that they are spouting asinine and stupendous excuses. Yet the local media will lap all of this up and report it without any kind of scrutiny.

This is so insulting to the intelligence of any self respecting fans of college sports that it will further lower the diminished credibility of anyone who has been stupid enough to buy their excuses up to this point.

Hello BN.

I decided to pick up on bluestreet's idea of emailing Adam Rose - the TrOJan alum - who is running The Times' "What's Bruin" blog. Here is the email that I just sent to him which you can freely copy and paste and send it to him (at adam@laist.com) as well:

Dear Adam,

In the following link please find some detailed information re. the cross-town rival of "UCLA Bruins" that Bruins would find very useful and would be appropriate for a blog entitled "What's Bruin""

http://www.bruinsnation.com/2008/5/15/508939/pete-carroll-tim-floyd-usc#comments

Please let me know if you will be able to post the information. And if you cannot post the information please let me know why you cannot share information concerning UCLA's cross-town rival on "What's Bruin."

Truly yours,

UniversityofSecondChoice

I am waiting for his response.

As soon as I get I will post it here.

I think it would be cool if we all email him and demand that he links that list int he LAT's "What's Bruin" blog.

You can post his responses in this thread.

This is a win-win.

We either expose him again as Trojie lapdog or he post's Menelaus's list in the LA Times.

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Updated with Adam Rose's response

Adam Rose responded back to my email. I will break it down for you all.

Adam said:

I read Bruins Nation regularly and it's an excellent blog. This particular post appears to be a comprehensive compilation of allegations against USC over the past few years. I cannot simply repost things due to copyright laws, though I frequently link to BN and may do so with this post. I tend to run a feature called "hot links" on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and this may be appropriate as something that would be amusing to Bruins.

I asked Adam if that means he will post a link to the list today. Haven’t gotten a response.

Then Adam claimed that he has been fair in covering the TrOJan mess:

It looks like I've mentioned all but one of the incidents that have happened since I started writing All Things Trojan on that particular blog. In fact, the BN post actually links to All Things Trojan as a reference. The one I haven't mentioned is Radovich not getting drafted because of alleged behavioral problems. As a point of fact, I am unaware of any behavioral problems. Nobody at the LA Times seems to know about it, and the Daily News beat writer outright refuted it. I would speculate that as a low draft pick, somebody made a mistake in his NFL draft evals. I didn't feel it was right to bring it up and cause any more unfounded embarrassment.

What he didn’t say that he mentioned those stories but he always wrote them from the prism of a TrOJie shill. Exhibit A: check out this comedic post on Mayo being an angel .

Adam ended with this:

When we proposed merging USC and UCLA coverage, the reaction was universally negative. Bruin fans made it clear they don't want to hear about Trojans. When I mentioned Mayo's scandal on What's Bruin, I again got feedback that Bruins didn't want to hear about it. As we add more writers to the blog, perhaps we will add a regular feature called SChadenfruede -- but for now I'll keep that to the hot links. The priorities for my own posts on What's Bruin are things like UCLA basketball/football and interviews with water polo coach Adam Krikorian and women's hoops coach Nikki Caldwell. 

That’s a lot of BS. What Adam is failing to mention that his readers didn’t want to hear about him making excuses for not writing on “What’s Bruin” because he was too busy spinning for SuC on “All Things TrOJan". I am sure his readers (the few that he has left) will appreciate a link to Menelaus’s list without any kind of gratuitous dig towards BN.

Keep an eye on his blog - "What's Bruin " - today to see if he posts the link to the List in his Friday's "Hotlinks".

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Update II

Adam Rose posted the link on What's Bruin today.