Today is the day to overreact about Tim Floyd's future as a college coach. Today is the day to think his career is in shambles, and that USC was his last least-savory stand.
Fortunately, we all know better. Floyd is a rogue, and in college sports, rogues always beguile another employer. Always.
USC's story, of course, is different because it has to stay and deal with whatever the NCAA decides to hand out to it. Typically, that is less than it ought to be because the NCAA is either outgunned or undermotivated to crack down on a cash cow, but the embarrassment caused by the twin investigations of the football and basketball programs ought to mortify the school.
If such a thing is possible, of course.
That's the real backstory of Tim Floyd's hurried resignation. In an offseason in which the FBI has become involved at two schools (USC for recruit buying and Louisville because of a woman who allegedly extorted Rick Pitino), a rampant test-fixing scandal (Memphis) followed the departure of a successful coach (John Calipari) to another school (Kentucky) which just fired its coach (Billy Gillispie) who in turn is suing the school to get paid by the terms of a contract he apparently didn't sign.
Even Fairleigh Dickinson fired its coach of 26 years, Tom Green, three months after the end of the season under unstated but weird circumstances. But that wasn't about cheating, or shaming the university. We're not even sure it was about Green's last couple of years. It's just the times.
But for those of you uncomfortable with change, be comforted by the notion that Tim Floyd will work again, because there's always an athletic director somewhere who wants it a little more than he should, or a president who needs an influx of quick cash too much, or some silver-tongued street hustler who has access to a player whose skills are too grand to resist.
That's college basketball, and that's why Tim Floyd will rise again. His terse, even frigid resignation letter, which apparently managed to get to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger before it got to USC, takes him out of the loop for awhile, but only for awhile.
• Floyd resigns | Parrish: One-and-done Mayo costs FloydAnd USC will rise again, even after the NCAA does whatever it plans to do. The basketball program will be hammered so that the football program's punishment can be softer, sure, but the basketball program is too tempting a job to be shunned by a coach who has a point to prove, or a bad situation to avoid, or a need to work again.
Indeed, the list of potential successors looks familiar, and once you get past the coaches who have bigger, better and safer jobs, like Jamie Dixon, anyone is in play. Mike Garrett, the USC athletic director, might not survive the twin humiliations of football and basketball, but if he does, he will have a long list of eager suitors, no matter what punishment is given.
The reason is simple: Nothing ever changes in college basketball. The money's too good, and until it stops being so good, the rules by which the industry plays are not the ones you find at the NCAA Clearinghouse.
So be surprised if you must, but only by the timing and the method of Floyd's departure. He beat feet out of town like he knew the law was on his heels, which suggests that he thought his O.J. Mayo problem would magically disappear until very recently. It suggests that a very big shoe, whatever it is, is about to drop.
It just won't be a big enough shoe to chasten anyone else in the industry. Nothing will be learned, because everyone is already too smart to think any different. Tim Floyd's career arc is already rising toward his next job.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
