"And 15% of it ? is full of angst," USC's director of athletics said.
Welcome to the angst part.New allegations from the old regime have interrupted the Trojans' comeback campaign and threaten to put the program in an even deeper ditch.
If reports prove true that football running back Joe McKnight and basketball player Davon Jefferson received improper benefits, the NCAA has the option to reopen the book it threw at USC in 2010.
Could the NCAA add to the original penalties that included a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships? Yes.
Should the NCAA do anything more? No.
Will the NCAA do something radical? Not likely, but stay tuned.
Trying to predict how the NCAA will act is a job that requires a hard hat. The organization of often paralyzing due process abandoned it completely in July to adjudicate the Penn State scandal.
The NCAA granted President Mark Emmert czar power to unilaterally act in undeniably extraordinary circumstances.
Then last week, stunningly, the larger body cleared North Carolina of charges in a widespread academic fraud case. The reasoning, best as one could tell, was that it was within the rules to offer bogus, easy-A classes to athletes as long as the bogusness was available to all students.
Not even members of the NCAA are always sure what's coming next.
"A lot of people in the business shake their heads," Tom Yeager, former chairman of the NCAA infractions committee and current commissioner of the Colonial Athletic Assn., said Wednesday.
USC, in the sanctions context of our times, does not deserve more than an additional wrist tap. The McKnight-Jefferson case only affirms the NCAA's original contention that "high-profile athletes demand high-profile compliance."
USC Nation ? and some of us in the media ? might owe the NCAA an apology for saying/suggesting/screaming that the original penalties were excessive.
This latest chapter might raise the sanctions to their proper level of appropriateness. McKnight-Jefferson appears, with less talented players, to be an appendage to Bush-Mayo.
The key question for the NCAA infractions committee is to ascertain whether it would have handed out different penalties had it known about the latest allegations.
The good news for USC is that the NCAA shot so high the first time, it might keep its gun in the holster. Or the NCAA could feel the reflexive need to restrict phone calls or visiting hours and/or take a couple of more scholarships away.
The NCAA is also hemmed in by the Penn State ruling in a case the infractions committee never got to hear. Penn State suffered a four-year bowl ban, debilitating scholarship losses and a $60-million fine.
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