Tim Floyd's resignation is as fishy as his recruiting techniques

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Tue Jun 09 07:49pm EDT

Tim Floyd's resignation is as fishy as his recruiting techniques

The reports will say that Tim Floyd "resigned" from his position as head basketball coach at USC. His letter, sent to school officials this afternoon, says the same thing. Really, though, we know better.

In all likelihood, this was a decision that was forced upon the embattled Floyd by a USC administration that wasn't going to tolerate malfeasance from a mediocre coach. It seems like a preemptive strike designed to appease the NCAA during its investigation of USC's basketball program. Force Tim Floyd out the door now and maybe any possible violations stemming from the eventual findings will be lessened.

In his letter, Floyd wrote:

"As of 1 p.m. today, I am resigning as head basketball coach at the University of Souithern California ... Unfortunately, I know longer feel I can offer the level of enthusiasm to my duties that is deserved by the university, my coaching staff, my players, their families, and the supporters of Southern Cal. I always promised my self and my family that if I ever felt I could no longer give my full enthusiasm to a job, that I should leave it to others who could."

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.