re: LSU featured on college football live on ESPN

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but if you want to start chest thumping before a game has been played and say "we deserve to be #1" you just look silly. No matter who your team is.

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Preseason Champions! where can I buy the tshirt?

Reggie bush.

but why coerce McKnight on a 3 way with "coach" when he was a Saint?

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Winning one Championship (and cheating to do it) and "dominating" a pre-Oregon rise PAC-10 is about as impressive as Vandy going 4-4 in the SEC.

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This is great spin, but you didn't qualify your championships as "in the ESPN era" which began right after USC won it's 1978 Championship. Also, the 2003 split NC happened. The BCS recognizes it as a split and many of your more rational Tiger fans do as well.

As far as trying to tie OJ Mayo and a "tennis chick" to USC football?

Go back to your definition of context.

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The coaching staff knew about it and lied. The moment they found out, they had a responsibility to report it, and remove him from playing (since he was ineligible). The fact that they let him keep getting the money, and played him knowing he was getting paid, IS paying a player to play for you.

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Uh, no it's not. An agent, hell that's glorifying him. A convicted felon who wanted to be an agent, and his shady bag man was making a deal with Reggie's greedy stepfather.

Reggie should have reported it but didn't. I am sure he knew. As far as the coaches? I can't say for certain whether any of them knew what was going on. San Diego is 100 miles away from USC, so it's not like it was under their noses.

You really need to check your facts there, KJ.

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you didn't qualify your championships as "in the ESPN era"

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I didn't bring up our championships. But, yes, 2 of ours are in that era. In the last decade, in fact.

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Also, the 2003 split NC happened. The BCS recognizes it as a split and many of your more rational Tiger fans do as well

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Consensus equals neither truth nor fact. Never has, never will. The moment the BCS came into existence in 1998, there existed for the first time in major college football a National Championship based directly (to some degree) on the results of games played on the field. At that moment, championships "awarded" by polls became as relevant as national championships awarded by polls in the NFL, NBA, college basketball, college baseball, Div. 1AA football, NHL, etc., etc. I don't care if you (or ESPN, or the BCS, or anyone else, or everyone else) claims otherwise. Opinion is not at issue, here, thus neither is consensus. One championship is won by winning on the field. Championships that are "awarded" by popularity are meaningless in a discussion of what is "earned".

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As far as trying to tie OJ Mayo and a "tennis chick" to USC football?

Go back to your definition of context

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The context is pretty clear, just as it was to the NCAA. SC won it's National Championship by cheating as part of a general culture of cheating in athletics at the university. The same principles that led to boosters paying off Mayo led to Bush getting bunches of money and other benefits with the coach's and the associate AD's approvals.

But even if you want to pretend they are relevant in some effort to "be real", then we'd have to bring in the rest of the discussion involving all the allegations that weren't proven. Like Mike Williams getting free rent (again, with the coach's knowledge), for example. If you want to exclude them based on the "context" that they were never sanctioned by the NCAA for that, then you have to accept that Mayo and the tennis chick are related within that same "context".

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As far as the coaches? I can't say for certain whether any of them knew what was going on.

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Yes you can. It's in the report:

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Further, the assistant football coach knew or should have known that
student-athlete 1 and agency partners A and B were engaged in violations that negatively
affected student-athlete 1's amateurism status. The assistant football coach provided false
and misleading information to the enforcement staff concerning his knowledge of agency
partner A's and B's activity and also violated NCAA legislation by signing a document
certifying that he had no knowledge of NCAA violations.

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Page 2, Section III, paragraph B-1

And, again, pretending that Reggie wasn't paid is total bullshite. He was handed money, himself, in cash. He bought stuff for the car with it. And since he had asked them for the money for the car himself, the fact they delivered it to him through his stepfather is hardly even a smokescreen.

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You really need to check your facts there, KJ.

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You need to bullshitting about the cheating you Trojans were caught doing redhanded.

Read the report, it's all in there. That's the facts, and I've checked them.

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You might gobble that NCAA report hook, line and sinker, but I don't.

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I see. So the facts ascertained by the NCAA investigators over years of investigation are all pure manufactured lies because one of the people involved is not a credible witness. But your version is the pure, unassailable, unvarnished truth because it is based 100% on the word of Reggie Bush . . . clearly an unbiased party with absolutely no reason whatsoever to fabricate, mislead, or lie about what went on in this situation. I guess O.J. really didn't do anything wrong, either, right? (Mayo, not the other one)

Somehow, I'm not surprised. The difference between us is that when my school does something bad, I'm pissed off at the people that did it, not the people who caught us. And I don't pretend like it didn't happen, or we didn't do it, or there's some big conspiracy out to get us. We paid Lester Earl. And it was a terrible thing to do. And it was stupid and wrong. And were punished for it. I grumbled that the punishment was a bit stiffer than it should have been, but I never tried to minimize what we did.

Bush was paid. He was paid in cash, among lots of other benefits. The coach knew about it, and let him keep playing. That is cheating on close to the highest order in the NCAA. If that had been the only violation, it would have warranted major sanctions. But it wasn't. It was neither the only violation for the football program nor the only sport in which there were violations. SC was cheating rampantly across the board, and doing so while already under probation. And instead of accepting that, and owning up to the major cheating your team team used to win its championship, you just keep making up lies and excuses.