DUFFY THE EMPIRE SLAYER

T-H’s Nightmare:  A vengeful Cheerleader with a knife.

Un-Dead and Loving It:  Mayo’s former Agent, who might suck the life out of usc, Counts his Blood Money losses at a batty $250,000, after major pain-in-the-neck O.J. severs ties;  Meanwhile, yet ANOTHER ex-trojan Basketballer gets arrested and denies all wrongdoing

No good story ever started with the words “O.J. severs.”

At least no one died when Mayo severed… yet.  Many people have been slain over a lot less than a quarter of a million dollars, and that’s what was just flushed down the troylet yesterday, when O.J. Mayo announced that the Bill Duffy Agency will no longer represent him.

How would you feel if you were Bill Duffy, and you funnelled $200,000 (plus a $50,000 SUV from Ronnie Lott) to a couple of carny hucksters for the sole purpose of retaining a guy who was already in the bag, and then you end up losing him right before he signs his first multi-million dollar contract?

The Agency and Mayo claim that the break-up was a mutual decision made to minimize the distractions for the Mayo family as the NBA Draft approaches.  Or is it more about distancing themselves?  Okay, but who is distancing themselves from whom?

Mayo reportedly just had a huge blow-up with his mentor Rodney Guillory, the guy accused of taking all those funds to try to lure Mayo to BDA.  Apparently, the man who Mayo insisted had his total respect, even AFTER all these allegations, is no longer on speaking terms with his ex-trojan ward, and may even be on the lamb, possibly fleeing the U.S. to a non-extradition Country, to avoid prosecution for Federal Tax Evasion.

As more dirt surfaces on the apparently-slimy Guillory, sc’s own Scott Wolf is now QUESTIONING the ethics of Tim Floyd and the sc Program, for allowing Guillory total access to sc, despite already getting them put on probation 8 years ago.  Wolf says that Guillory was omnipresent at all Mayo-related functions, as the ultimate V.I.P., and that when he protested to sc staff, they just winked at him or rolled their eyes.

After reading that friendly fire, from sc’s own guy, can you believe that there are STILL some total jackasses out there who think that usc had no way of knowing that anything dubious was going on?  All the denying going on is comical, including that by Duffy.

But Duffy will probably avoid all penalties, just like sc, because he is so thoroughly CONNECTED.  In fact, one of the Investigators for the NBA Players Association just had to RECUSE himself, because he has previously worked for Duffy.  So that one guy’s connection to Duffy was KNOWN enough to force his exclusion — but what about all the ancillary connections — like six degrees of Kevin Bacon — that Duffy has almost certainly developed over the years, not to mention all the cronies of the guy that stepped down?

Believe it or not, Mayo isn’t the only ex-trojan Basketball player who has just fallen into trouble despite DOING NOTHING WRONG:  Lodrick Stewart was in Kansas, where his twin brother transferred after blowing off Fig Tech (because they wouldn’t play him), and got busted for the sc staple of violent crimes, Assault & Battery.  Allegedly, Stewart decked some Jayhawk at a bar, by punching him in the face.  It might not have been so bad, but the victim fell back and hit his head on concrete.  He had to go to the hospital, so Stewart had to be arrested.

But… like all good trojans, he reportedly DENIES his guilt.  Stewart says that he has WITNESSES that will clear him.  It figures.  It would be better to see the video surveillance tapes, because it’s harder to persuade video tapes to say what you want them to say.

Okay, okay — Let’s say, just for the sake of the argument, that Lodrick Stewart is completely innocent, and is just getting railroaded.  Okay, then let’s go a step further, and concede that O.J. Mayo is also completely innocent, and is just being fraudulently persecuted;  And… let’s keep going:  Reggie Bush is pure as the driven snow, and solely a victim of Extortion.  Well, then the logical conclusion is that O.J. Simpson was FRAMED, and was nowhere NEAR Brentwood on that fateful night.

At what point does it become more than a coincidence, that SO MANY ex-trojans wind up on the wrong side of the law?  That is, UNTIL they get to Court — or the Investigators’ Conference Room — where Money talks and Justice walks.  Even a trojan NAMED “Justice” got a taste of sc’s Courtroom savvy — If that happened in a movie script, critics would roll their eyes, like the sc staffers who were interrogated about Tim Floyd being Rodney Guillory’s bitch. 

And speaking of bad scripts, we won’t mention any names, but a Bruin just killed the Indiana Jones franchise, and for some inexplicable reason, Spielberg couldn’t save it.  Plenty entertaining, and exciting, but a little hokier, and not nearly as engrossing as the 1st and 3rd installments.  Kind of disappointing, considering that Raiders is our all-time fave, and that they had 18 years to get this one right.  Don’t get us wrong —  It’s still better than most of the rest of what Hollywood has to offer — We just expected better from The Master.

Could Floyd be the sacrificial lamb in this mess?  Like Indy II, but without the heart.