Not this time. All of this stuff has been brewing for a long while. In actuality, nothing has been swept under the rug, it’s all just been adding up.
Even Cowherd today was bashing USC, which would be the equivalent of some of us bashing Bama. He came right out and said the words everyone’s afraid of: “lack of institutional control,†and “death penalty†He never suggested that USC would get the death penalty, only that lack of institutional control has sometimes ended up in the death penalty.
He’s been saying for months now that there’s no way the NCAA can punish USC because their too big and important to the Pac-10 and football in general. But he’s been singing a different tune the last week or so. I know a lot of you here don’t like him, but he’s a well connected guy who’s rarely wrong on his predictions. Even he sees the writing on the wall in LA. Add the football problems to the basketball problems and you’re looking at major sanctions.
Remember how long our case dragged out? It felt like we were under the microscope for years. I’m sure that’s what a lot of USC fans are feeling right now. This investigation has dragged on. When it dragged on for us we felt like the NCAA was doing it to punish us further, to screw with our recruiting (which I’m not saying is out of the realm of possibility.) Yet now when the NCAA drags out USC’s case, many of us want to say it’s because their hoping the rest of the country forgets it and moves on.
It doesn’t work like that. USC is about to get hit pretty hard.