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When West Virginia high schooler O.J. Mayo enrolled at USC last summer, we knew two things: He was the biggest “get” in the program’s basketball history and was only sticking around for one year. While his presence and NBA-ready talent brought immediate attention to the city’s other hoops program, he also brought trouble with him.

Now, with the one-year Mayo experience officially over on the court, the Trojans are left to clean up all of his issues off it.

According to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” the 6-foot 5-inch guard broke NCAA rules by accepting cash and benefits from Los Angeles promoter Rodney Guillory. According to the report, Guillory received more than $200,000, but only shared a fraction of the money with Mayo. These violations date to Mayo’s senior year at Huntington (West Virginia) High School through his only season with USC.

This should come to no one’s surprise. Sports Illustrated lobbed praise at Mayo as a seventh grader in 2002. Four years later he was a teenager drawing fans to the gym like Dwyane Wade to reruns of “The View.” That kind of attention brought a high level of scrutiny, and as a result many people knew more about controversies surrounding Mayo off the court than his work on it before he arrived in LA should have served as a vivid warning.

Mayo was a basketball vagabond, moving from West Virginia to Kentucky to Ohio and, finally, back to West Virginia. He was cited for marijuana possession, a charge later dropped after two of the individuals with him took responsibility. He bumped an official. He fought with classmates, committed to the Trojans without visiting the campus and seemed more interested in creating an aura in image-conscious Los Angeles than preparing for the next level. Was every incident his fault? Were some overblown by the media? No, and likely yes. Still, it’s fair to say that for most of his high school career, controversy followed him closely.

No matter. We loved the idea of a kid with Magic’s flair and LeBron’s hype coming to the Pac-10.

And if any of us thought Mayo’s negatives were an issue, USC Head Coach Tim Floyd and Mayo’s teammates insisted that they weren’t.

In March 2007, as a guest on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” Floyd defended his recruit saying, “Yeah, he got in a couple of fights in high school, but I did too.”

Sophomore forward Taj Gibson told ESPN, “He’s been one of the guys, hanging with all of us. He’s been a great teammate.”

We believed it.

Then, Mayo took tickets to a Lakers game from his friend Carmelo Anthony, Floyd, called it “ignorance” on his own part, and said Mayo was not to blame.

When Mayo allegedly punched teammate Daniel Hackett in the jaw, Floyd and Hackett dismissed it like we’d be crazy to think otherwise. Even when the Trojans struggled on the court this year, they were routinely excused because they were compelling and young and full of what ifs? “What if Gabe Pruitt and/or Nick Young came back?” and especially, “What if O.J. likes school so much he decides to stick around?”

Now we know the answer. Stupid us. Again, even if every Mayo-related incident had some embellishment or innuendo attached, the sheer volume of problems should have been a tip. Certainly many were concerned about what would come when Mayo arrived at Troy.

But shouldn’t USC face a heap of criticism as well?

It was less than a year ago that we were excusing the university from any misconduct in the Reggie Bush-Lloyd Lake case. If Bush took money and the school didn’t know about it, how can they be punished?

However, now it appears likely that Mayo also took money while he was a student.

Once again, USC denies any wrongdoing.

But how many times, with how many high profile players, are they to be excused? The university prides itself on running pro style programs, but it’s still collegiate athletics. There are rules, and Mike Garrett and Co. should understand that if they’re going to have elite athletes on campus, they have to ramp up their compliance efforts, not shrink back to better avoid responsibility if anything should go wrong.

Plausible deniability isn’t a good defense. At least not the second time around.

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