O. J. Mayo: A First Report on the Money Trailing Behind the Collegiate Star
(This will be the first report of many dealing with O.J. Mayo and the allegations that he received gifts and money in violation of NCAA rules.)
The announcement of the results of a four month investigation were televised Sunday, May 11. The announcement of the results of a four month investigation televised Sunday, May 11 were presaged by a cryptic statement within in a May 2, 2006 MSNBC.com article:
I wanted to meet a college player who I really enjoyed watching this year. So I asked a friend of mine, who is a very powerful man in the game, to introduce me to him. And he said, “I’d like to help but I can’t.” And when I asked why. He said, “You are three years and $500,000 short.”
The quote in the article was posted Friday May 2, 2008 at 9:50 a.m. Only 26 minutes later, at 10:16, it was posted on ESPN.com.
Six days later the person who put forth the quote on ESPN.com wanted for all readers of that website to see that he felt William Wesley was the man, the agent to whom the person was referring. The poster at ESPN.com, in his stated hope to be able to proclaim Wesley a suspect, made the following statement:
I suggested to _____ that, right or not, the phrase “powerful man in the game” nowadays seems to carry the implication that it’s one of a very small group, including William Wesley or Sonny Vaccaro.
For the person at ESPN.com to make such a pronouncement it can only be hoped that perhaps hubris momentarily overrode clarity. The basketball world is part of the major sports landscape in America. And there are many, many powerful men in the game whose names are rarely spoken. Some can be seen, most are not. The conjecture was flatly shot down:
William Wesley has been a friend of mine for 22 years, and I wish him nothing but the best. He has a great talent to make connections to people, and I consider him a friend.
In no way did I want to imply that William Wesley was the person who paid the player I was referring to. It doesn’t matter who the player involved was, and it doesn’t matter who the agent was. But I have had some phone calls from people saying they thought I was talking about William Wesley paying somebody, and I want to make clear that I wasn’t.
And the players, so far, are:
At MSNBC: Darren Rovell - Sports business writer, formerly a sports business writer for ESPN.com
The agent: David Falk - Michael Jordan’s agent (among other basketball stars such as Patrick Ewing)
At ESPN.com: Henry Abbott - Blogger-owner of True Hoop, a basketball blog within the pages of ESPN.com. Abbott’s pursuit of NBA “influenceer” William Wesley is known throughout the blogosphere. Sonny Vaccaro was once the man “next to” Mayo but was “muscled out of the scene.”
Just three days after Abbott waited six days to contact Falk, ESPN’s Kelly Naqi reported the results of a four month investigation televised Sunday, May 11 on the ESPN Sunday edition of Outside the Lines. The primary target of the investigation was O.J. Mayo. According to informant Louis Johnson, a former sportswriter for the Long Beach Press-Telegram (Ca.) in interviews with Naqi, a middleman named Rodney Guillory was given $250,000 which was to be used to steer Mayo, a freshman at the University of Southern California, to sign with agent Bill Duffy when he turned pro.
Johnson, according to Naqi, met Mayo in 2006 and became a middleman (”runner”) for Mayo with Guillory.
Among the charges alleged by Johnson are:
• Over the course of roughly three years prior to the start of Mayo’s freshman season at USC, BDA Sports provided Guillory with about $200,000, some of it through an account set up at Citibank. Johnson said Guillory told him details about how the account was set up through an intermediary and how it worked: Each month, Guillory told a BDA official what the anticipated “expenses” would be, and that amount would be put into the account to take care of Guillory and Mayo’s needs. Guillory, Johnson said, had a card to make withdrawals from the account. Johnson said he was sometimes with Guillory when he made those withdrawals, and Johnson provided “Outside the Lines” with a receipt from one $200 withdrawal that he said occurred in his presence.
• BDA helped Guillory purchase an Infiniti QX56 that Guillory drives. California registration records show Guillory’s vehicle came from a dealership co-owned by former USC and NFL player Ronnie Lott, a longtime friend of Duffy, BDA Sports’ chairman and CEO. According to Consumer Guide Automotive, the car was valued at around $50,000 when it was first purchased in 2005.
• Guillory has been giving money to Mayo for years, according to Johnson, who provided Western Union receipts that illustrate how Johnson and Guillory wired hundreds of dollars to friends of Mayo while he was in high school to avoid a paper trail leading to Mayo.
• Hotel receipts and airline itineraries show multiple trips made by Johnson and Guillory. The destinations correspond with where Mayo played in high school and at tournaments around the country.
• Guillory paid for Mayo’s cell phone service, which T-Mobile billed to a nonprofit foundation run by Guillory that, according to California state records, is designed to serve “the educational, health, recreational and social needs of youths and elderly citizens residing in inner-city communities.” Johnson provided “Outside the Lines” with the service agreement for four separate lines on the account, set up on March 13, 2007. Johnson said the phone lines were for Guillory, Mayo, a Mayo relative and Johnson. T-Mobile sent a bill to Guillory’s foundation for $558.56 for the September charges for the four lines. Of that amount, $171.17 was for Mayo’s phone service and another $192.33 was for the phone service of Mayo’s relative, according to the invoice and Johnson.
• In addition to several shopping sprees at the two Men’s Land stores in the Los Angeles area, Johnson said Guillory provided Mayo with a flat-screen television, a hotel room and meals — items all paid for with a credit card that belongs to another nonprofit organization, The National Organization of Sickle Cell Prevention and Awareness Foundation. The organization has never registered as a charitable trust with the California Attorney General’s Office and is unknown in the Los Angeles sickle-cell charitable community.
• Guillory purchased airline tickets for a member of Mayo’s family and another Mayo friend to visit Mayo at USC, said Johnson, who provided “Outside the Lines” with a plane itinerary and a receipt for those trips.
Further, Johnson provided Naqi with receipts for:
• A hotel room in Hermosa Beach, which Johnson said Mayo and a girlfriend used.
• A 42-inch flat-screen TV, which Johnson said was for Mayo’s dorm room.
• Meals and thousands of dollars worth of clothing.
Duffy’s company, Bill Duffy Associates (BDA Sports Management), represents 94 professional basketball players around the world. Among his company’s 35 NBA clients are: Boston Celtics point guard, Rajon Rondo, the Denver Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony, New Orleans’ Bonzi Wells, Sasha Vujacic of the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers prized rookie Greg Oden, the Phoenix Suns’ Steve Nash, Detroit’s Tayshaun Prince, and Houston Rockets center, Yao Ming. He represents WNBA stars Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury and Simone Augustus of the Minnesota Lynx.
A USA Today report by Jack Carey notes that BDA’s Bill Duffy and Calvin Andrews issued the following statement to ESPN on Friday, which, in part, read:
“Developing a rapport with Rodney Guillory was a prerequisite for the multiple agencies attempting to recruit O.J. Mayo. There were absolutely no illegalities in our recruitment of O.J. Mayo, nor were there any agreements or understandings towards his selection of BDA.”
According to an ESPN.com article in which writer Andy Katz was a contributor, BDA, on Sunday night, provided the following statement:
“Bill Duffy met O.J. for the first time shortly before O.J. selected BDA as his agency. Neither Calvin Andrews, Bill Duffy, nor any other BDA employee engaged in any conduct that could have remotely jeopardized O.J. Mayo’s eligibility,” the statement said. “Everything in the recent report that suggests otherwise is false. O.J. selected BDA based on our achievements and our commitment to work closely with O.J. to maximize his considerable potential on and off the court.”
USC is also denying any wrong-doing on their part:
“The NCAA and the Pac-10 reviewed O.J. Mayo’s amateur status before and during his enrollment at USC, and did not identify any amateurism violations. Mayo and USC fully cooperated in these investigations. The University investigated and reported a violation involving Mayo’s receipt of tickets to a Denver Nuggets game from his friend Carmelo Anthony. Mayo’s eligibility was reinstated after he made a charitable contribution in the amount of the value of the tickets.”
And Mayo (pictured from left to right: Carlos Dew, Todd Mayo, O. J. Mayo, Rodney Guillory, and Louis Johnson) is following suit. On Sunday night Mayo said:
“I don’t know anything about it. It caught me by surprise. I’ve got to get to L.A. to see what’s going on. I’m just focusing on the draft.”
Mayo also said he had spoken with no one from USC or BDA about money steered to him from the sports management agency:
“I had no knowledge of anything like that. I’ll find our more when I meet with Mr. Duffy and Mr. [Calvin] Andrews [of BDA].”
The soon-to-be pro then denied he had taken any money:
“No sir, I did not receive any money from Calvin or Rodney or anything. It all caught me by surprise…. I would just like to know if I did [get money] where did the money go. I was a struggling college student like everyone else. I bicycled to class. The truth will come out, even though the perception is reality.”
This is obviously just the tip of the proverbial iceberg for this story. As it stands we have “super agent” David Falk, 10 days ago telling Darren Rovell a story about a player he wanted to meet but was told he was “$500,000 short and three years late.” We have Henry Abbott posting Falk’s quote only in a blog post minutes after MSNBC.com published the article. Abbott then finally decides to get in touch with Falk six days later after allowing the quote to circulate - or not - around basketball circles and the sports blogosphere.
Three days later Outside the Lines airs Kelly Naqi’s report which features an interview with alleged runner for BDA, Louis Johnson. Johnson appears to provide inside information into the insipid world of “amateur athletics” especially as it pertains to O. J. Mayo and Bill Duffy Associates. Of the $250,000 alleged to have been given to Rodney Guillory to persuade Mayo to sign with Duffy after his college career, Johnson alleges that Mayo only received about $30,00 in gifts and money; the rest went to Guillory’s pockets.
However, Mayo, Duffy, Guillory, and USC all deny any wrong-doing or knowledge of Johnson’s allegations.
We have far to go before this is resolved.
(Much, much more to come.)
Tags: Andy Katz, Billy Duffy Associates, Darren Rovell, David Falk, Henry Abbott, Jack Carey, Kelly Naqi, Louis Johnson, Rodney Guillory, USC
Share This Article
1 Comment
Comment On This Article
From The Gallery
Image Gallery Is Empty!
Website Poll
[…] ed. note - read D-Wil’s Monday column on O.J. Mayo here. […]
Pingback by O. J. Mayo Report 2: Investigation, the ESPN Way | NationalSportsReview.com on May 13, 2008