Me and the Devil was walkin' side by side
Me and the Devil, ooh was walkin' side by side – Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues 

When Tim Floyd ‘got in business with’ O.J. Mayo and Rodney Guillory, he knew what he was doing. Floyd was essentially signing a deal with the devil. He was living the life of the great Robert Johnson's blues lyrics.

We’ve seen this many times before. Vernon Maxwell was the late Stormin’ Norman Sloan’s Mayo at Florida. Tony Cole was Jim Harrick’s at Georgia. (Might Renardo Sidney be Rick Stansbury’s at Mississippi St.?)

Floyd cut and run with a check in hand on Tuesday. He announced his resignation as USC’s head basketball coach via his hometown newspaper in Jackson, MS., the Clarion-Ledger.

That’s ‘MS’ as in the state of Mississippi. And that’s fitting because Floyd is so far from Hollywood these days.

As recently as early April, Memphis and Arizona had serious interest in hiring Floyd. Today and forever more, no school in America will touch Floyd.

His college-coaching days are over. Done. History. Kaput.

Advertisement

With an allegation, as told to the IRS and FBI by a former Guillory associate who also did interviews with ESPN’s Outside the Lines and HBO’s Real Sports, that Floyd provided Guillory with $1,000 cash on the streets of Beverly Hills, he decided to accept a settlement with USC instead of fighting the charges.

Translation: Floyd pled no-contest.

According to multiple reports, Floyd didn’t tell a soul. Not one player, nor an assistant. Did he think his staff had a subscription to the Clarion-Ledger?

To the end, Floyd was all about himself and nobody else.

Eleven years ago after winning big during a four-year tenure at Iowa St., Floyd was a hot commodity. Former Bulls GM Jerry Krause was so infatuated with Floyd that he wanted to shove Phil Jackson out of town. Krause eventually did so and Floyd made a terrible career move, jumping for the money in Chicago even though he knew the Bulls faced a monumental rebuilding job that had failure written all over it.

His NBA coaching record looks like this: 93-235. That’s ugly, real ugly.

His coaching future looks like this: Sioux Falls, ID. If Floyd’s ever a head coach again, it’ll be for the Skyforce. Then again, he could land the head gig for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

Harrick’s no longer with the Bakersfield Jam of the NBA’s D-League and that’s too bad. Just think, maybe one night in 2010 some lucky guy could've been sitting at a bar in Bakersfield after the Jam beat the Floyd-led Valley Vipers and overhear Harrick and Floyd telling ol’ recruiting-war stories.

Man oh man, the stories they could tell.

So Floyd took his paycheck and hit the road. It’ll be a long, dusty and lonely road. That’s what you get when you sign up with a one-and-done player who has spent the 4-5 previous years engulfed in the AAU scene. Those players are program killers. Signing up with them is like doing a deal with the devil.

So my old evil spirit can
catch a Greyhound bus and ride -- Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues

**B.E.’s Bonus Nuggets**

--Did you know that Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison were both verbal commitments to Iowa St. before Floyd took the Bulls job? I guess we can safely say that changed the Big 12 landscape for a few years.

--Where will USC turn? Here’s a few names that might help the NCAA look on the Trojans with a little more leniency because of their completely unscathed track records with the NCAA: UNLV’s Lon Kruger, former Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight and Oregon State’s Craig Robinson. Who knows if they’d be interested? Who knows if anybody would be interested in this sinking ship that is USC basketball? Indiana got Tom Crean, but Indiana is Indiana. USC is USC football and everything else is much less significant.

--There’s a possibility USC could go with an interim coach for one year in hopes of settling the situation with the NCAA before possibly hiring a big name, assuming that coach feels the sure-to-come sanctions can be quickly overcome.

--Louisville head coach Rick Pitino has hired Holy Cross head coach Ralph Willard to be his top assistant. Willard's first head-coaching job was at Western Kentucky, which he took to the Sweet 16 in the early 1990s. Willard parlayed that success into the Pittsburgh job, where he was eventually fired before going to Holy Cross for a 10-year tenure. He worked under Pitino with the Knicks and at Kentucky.

--Jay Wright and Trent Johnson have been smiling this week at Villanova and LSU, respectively. That's because Scottie Reynolds and Tasmin Mitchell took their names out of the NBA Draft and decided to return for their senior seasons. The SEC is really going to be back next year, especially with the likes of Mitchell, Mississippi State's Jarvis Varnado, Kentucky's Patrick Patterson and Arkansas' Michael Washington returning after briefly testing 'the process.' Now if UK's Jodie Meeks and Tennessee's Tyler Smith come back to school (both remain on the fence), the SEC will be even stronger after its worst basketball season in decades.

6/13 update from B.E.: UT's Smith decided to return to school for his senior year, as did South Carolina's Dominique Archie. Darrin Horn, the Gamecocks' second-year coach, is still awaiting word as to whether or not senior point guard Devan Downey will come back to Columbia. Meeks has yet to announce his final decision, either.

Brian Edwards can be reached at briane@vegasinsider.com.