I understand that college athletes have it rough. Especially the blue-chip major-college level athletes. I mean athletes-only housing, the top-notch practice facilities and gear, travel to away games via charter jet or luxury bus. ‘Round-the-clock tutoring and academic advising, yeah it’s tough bein’ the big man on campus.

So what does OJ Mayo - your average No. 1 high school recruit, burgeoning marketing machine, freshman phenom of the USC Trojans to do when he wants to take in a NBA game, kick back and get some much needed R and R? He gets a couple of tickets from NBA star Carmelo Anthony and ends up in hot water.

Give me a break! Doesn’t the NCAA have bigger fish to fry? I mean, isn’t an ex-Heisman Trophy winner under the microscope for taking cash, a car and a rent-free house for his family while his football team was on a national championship run? Is it just me or does the whole system seem out of whack on this one?

It has long been thought that the NCAA is like the small town sheriff looking to bust locals driving 56 MPH in a 55 MPH zone while the cocky out-of-towner doing 90 gets away scott-free while Sheriff NCAA scrawls-out a meaningless ticket.

Mayo is now under investigation for improperly receiving benefits – a violation of NCAA policy and they are looking into the matter. What the NCAA will uncover during their probe is that Melo is as generous with tickets as Barry Bonds is as generous with being an ass. Melo is known for giving away tickets to friends, charities and even fans. It is common practice for Melo to dish free tickets even while on the road. It really came as no shock when a couple of free tickets for the Nuggets vs. Lakers game last week ended up in Mayo’s hands. So where is the improper benefit in that gesture? It was a basketball game, not a Lexus.

To make things right, the NCAA may have Mayo donate the $460 (face value of the pair of tickets) to charity. If this was any other freshman I would be even more outraged – I could scarcely afford the $460 per semester for books and scraping together an extra five bills would have killed me. Mayo on the other hand probably keeps $460 in the ash tray of his Range Rover, but that’s not the point of this diatribe.

I think that NCAA basketball picks what cases to pursue based on the profile of the athlete and how damaging the end result could be to the institution and the NCAA as a whole. Why didn’t the NCAA go after Bush while he was still on campus? You can’t tell me that it takes over two years after a guy leaves school to put a case together for rules violations. We are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here and there has got to be a paper trail a mile long. I guess Mayo is an easier target. He’s flashy, marketable and practically recruited himself to USC. The NCAA has had their radar gun on him for a while.

Now some NCAA basketball expert picks the Mayo/Melo situation to investigate. Congrats! Now the NCAA can shout to the sports world “look, we caught this guy driving 36 MPH in a 35 MPH zone, and boy howdy is he gonna pay for it!”

Zoom, there goes Bush and his cohorts driving 90 MPH in their ill-gotten luxury car, changing lanes without signaling, talking on cell phones, one headlight missing and dragging the reputation of the Heisman Trophy along behind them.