When the Inmates Run the Asylum, This Is What Happens

Uh-uh, he don't need a girlfriend.

As has been well-established by O.J. Mayo, Tim Floyd doesn't call the shots at USC. Neither does Pete Carroll, apparently. The players run things at Southern Cal, and the "school" is proud to boast that it's a haven for superstars as they sort out the latter stages of their adolescences and then go pro, either as athletes or losers or whatever else guys who max out in college go into. That USC even continues the charade that it cares about educating its revenue-generating athletes is admirable; other schools, like the Ohio State Joke of a University, don't seem to. Buckeyes are just proud that their "student athletes" make it through five-credit courses like History of Rock and Roll or put in extra "classroom" time over the summer taking golf and AIDS awareness (for which the final exam is a one-question retrospective: Is it good to get AIDS?). And, I can only imagine that the faculty and the non-celebrity students at Southern Cal are thrilled to be at a place with such proper priorities.

I mention all of this because on Friday, a basketball team that had already become a quasi-circus thanks to the superstar recruit who's "handling" things like recruiting while periodically finding the time to call his coach became even more bizarre when it signed Romeo Miller. You may know him as Lil' Romeo. Yes, that Lil' Romeo. Is going to USC. On a basketball scholarship.

From what I can tell, Romeo is a decent enough basketball player. The article from Fox says he held his own at the ABCD camp. But come on, even if he can play, this is what USC is doing? The Trojans need this like the Knicks need to give Jerome James a max extension. And why would USC subject the other players to the taunting that will come with Romeo? I mean, it's as though the Trojan athletic department is sending out emails to the students of the Pac-10 suggesting insults and mockery. Did Tim Floyd watch Romeo's videos or read his lyrics before he accepted this pledge? He wants this showing up to run the point?



"Call me a pretty boy"? "Crown me the greatest"? Yeah, that won't get annoying. And what happens when they show this at Pauley throughout entire games?


It's wrong for me to seem outraged, though. I mostly love this. It's the kind of ridiculous situation that a blogger dreams of. Only Cam'ron would think that this sort of thing was normal, and I suppose that would make him a good candidate to succeed Mike Garrett as USC's athletic director at some point. Really, the only sad part, at least for me, of this entire thing is that Romeo won't be on campus until the fall of 2008. By then, O.J. Mayo will be in the NBA. Otherwise, they could have made beautiful music together. Literally.