USC’s Hackett backs ex-Coach Tim Floyd
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On Tuesday, former USC guard Daniel Hackett did what he does best: display intense defense.
Hackett landed hard on the side of USC Coach Tim Floyd, who resigned Tuesday in the face of a mass exodus of players and an NCAA investigation stemming from O.J. Mayo‘s one season as a Trojan.
Hackett said, ‘I feel like with all this speculation, Coach Floyd did a selfless act. He resigned for the sake of the program to save the players from scrutiny and embarrassment. He acted like a man.’
On the one season he played with Mayo, Hackett said, ‘I know there were a lot of people around O.J. But I don’t think Coach Floyd did anything wrong. He would do nothing like that.’
Meanwhile, Anthony V. Salerno, the attorney who represents Louis Johnson, a onetime confidant of Mayo, had a different view of the situation.
Salerno: ‘What it looks like is that [Athletic Director] Mike Garrett gave Floyd the option of chewing a cyanide capsule instead of conducting a public execution. Floyd decided to bite the capsule.’
Johnson claimed Floyd gave an agent’s ‘runner’ who was connected to Mayo an envelope with at least $1,000 on Feb. 14, 2007.
-- Chris Foster