Tim Floyd reactions from around the intrawebs

By now, you've probably heard: Tim Floyd has stepped down as the head coach of the USC Trojans. Here is what the best have to say about it:

• Gary Parrish of CBSSports: Mayo had bounced around in high school. He was tied to a noted "runner" named Rodney Guillory. He had been a big part of a corrupt summer scene for years. And yet Floyd still took him, still put him on scholarship and welcomed him to campus. Two years later, Floyd's career is effectively over, his name forever tainted by allegations that he, among other things, once gave Guillory a stack of $100 bills on a street corner in Beverly Hills. When that allegation broke, some questioned whether Floyd was stupid enough to deal that way because in this business it's usually the assistants whose fingers get dirty. But I never accepted that logic as a defense, because one thing I had always been told about Floyd is that he was incredibly private and determined to not let others know what he was doing, regardless of what he was doing.

• Dana O'Neil of ESPN: Simple answer? Good old-fashioned hubris. For Floyd and anyone even remotely associated with the USC basketball team to think the NCAA wasn't paying attention to their every move in the wake of the Reggie Bush scandal and the hoops' team decision to bring in Mayo (basketball's version of Bush) is either plain foolish or plain arrogant. I'll take the latter. I'm not naive enough to think college basketball is clean and pure, but at least you have to give most of the rulebreakers some props -- they're clever rule maniuplators or masters of plausible deniability. Yet reportedly Floyd was standing on a street corner in Los Angeles forking over some money to an agent's runner. Not since Hugh Grant made a late-night deal has such a stupid exchange been transacted in LA.


• Andy Katz of ESPN: How much will the NCAA look at Floyd's resignation as a sacrificial lamb in the wake of a major investigation that involves football and basketball? Was this move pushed by USC so that whenever it is in front of the committee on infractions it can show that it took corrective action to avoid a charge of lack of institutional control?


• Jeff Goodman of FOXSports: Now starting for USC, Percy "Lil' Romeo" Miller. Nope, this isn't a movie or even a music video. It could be the reality next year facing the USC Trojans. USC basketball won't just return to obscurity. The Trojans program is headed for a virtual free-fall where fans will yearn for the days of mediocrity when Henry Bibby was running the show. Indiana secured Tom Crean despite the sanctions left over from the Kelvin Sampson phone call mess. Arizona struggled to lure a big-name coach and eventually settled on Sean Miller even after the Lute Olson saga and two seasons without any legitimate recruits. But those programs have tradition. They have won national championships and been to multiple Final Fours. USC has nothing.


• Rush The Court: Instead of Floyd’s lasting legacy at USC becoming a deep tournament run led by OJ Mayo and his SuperFriends, it will now instead be sullied ruminations of the urchin Rodney Guillory and a stack of benjamins handed over on a corner in Beverly Hills, just another soulless transaction like so many others on LA street corners in a given day. But if you think about the whole sordid affair, who ever believed that Mayo, a kid who had never expressed a bit of interest in the Pac-10 throughout his prep career, suddenly became enamored with the City of Angels without so much as a recruiting visit? Who out there bought into that yarn that Floyd often related about Guillory showing up at his office one day ‘offering’ Mayo, and letting the coach know that ‘ OJ will call you,’ not the other way around? The whole thing was farked from the get-go, and anyone with any sensibility about how this sport works knew it.


• TheRiot from Rumors and Rants: Up to this point, neither USC nor Floyd had commented on the investigation. They still haven’t. Floyd doesn’t need to. When a coach resigns after very serious allegations have been thrown his way, it really doesn’t leave much room for debate, does it? It might as well be a guilty plea, regardless of what he did or didn’t do. Sure, Floyd could have just been burned out on the job. But is that possible for a basketball lifer? It’s more likely the athletic department realized what kind of shit Floyd had gotten the program into and gave him a chance to slide out of town.


• Chris DuFrense of the LA Times: The sad part is Floyd is a decent guy and good tactician and, in a very short time, became arguably the most successful basketball coach in school history -- leading the Trojans to an unprecedented (for them) three straight NCAA tournaments. And here comes the almost comical question: Who wants to coach USC basketball? The new hire will inherit the specter of NCAA sanctions that could kick USC to the closet for years. Even if the NCAA exonerates USC's basketball program, the next guy inherits . . . what?


• Eamonn Brennan of The Dagger: One week after Floyd passionately (and hilariously) came out against one of his players declaring for the draft and two months after he rebuffed Arizona's coaching advances because he said he wanted to build his own traditions at USC, we're supposed to believe that he can't muster the enthusiasm to coach? Floyd is many things, but dispassionate isn't one of them. Now he, and USC, expect the college basketball world to think that this resignation is about apathy and not about the explosive allegations that were reported by Yahoo! Sports last month? Oh, come on. Contrary to the old adage, things are almost always what they seem in college basketball. Indiana learned that when they hired Kelvin Sampson. Memphis is getting that lesson right now, as they deal with fallout from John Calipari's seemingly-lawless reign at the school. And now USC has realized that the things that seemed too good to be true (like O.J. Mayo recruiting himself to the school) were, indeed, too good to be true.