The NCAA is expected to rule in the nextfew days on the eligibility of USC wide receiver Mike Williams.
    Williams decided to skip his juniorseason earlier this year after a U.S. district judge ruled in favorof Maurice Clarett on the NFL’s age requirement.
    Williams also hired an agent andreportedly had deals with Nike and trading card companies.
    Unfortunately for Williams and Clarett,the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals felt differently and struckdown the ruling the week before the draft, leaving the two stuck infootball’s no man’s land.
    Clarett essentially has burned hisbridges with Ohio State may spend this season again bumming aroundwith pals Jim Brown and LeBron James. Williams, however, hasapplied to the NCAA for reinstatement and enrolled in summerclasses at USC.
    Williams, who did not attend school inthe spring, also had to fire his agent and pay back money heborrowed and earned from endorsements prior to the draft.
    The NCAA always has maintained a “onestrike and you’re out,” policy when it comes to athletes andagents. Any student-athlete caught taking gifts from agentsautomatically has received swift and tough punishment.
    The NCAA still is dragging it’s feet onWilliams, though. This makes one wonder, if the athlete in questionwasn’t the best player on the No. 1 team in the largest market inthe country, would this still be up in the air?
    Take the example of Colorado widereceiver Jeremy Bloom. In addition to catching passes for theBuffalos, Bloom also is an Olympic skier who began acceptingendorsements from skiing companies.
    Bloom isn’t a football player pretendingto be a skier. He is the current world champion in freestyle mogulsand a 2002 Olympian. Odds are that on his doctor’s forms the jobsection reads “professional skier.”
    To the NCAA, this didn’t matter.Accepting endorsement dollars even from another sport was, in theirview, dangerous enough to the integrity of college athletics.
    What’s troubling is the NCAA, so quickwith Bloom, still is considering whether Williams, who hired anagent and accepted money, should be awarded a “Get Out of Jail FreeCard?”
    Williams certainly won’t suffer from notplaying in college this season. There’s not a sports agent in thecountry who wouldn’t support Williams until the next draft. If hekeeps himself in shape, he’s a lock for the first round of nextyear’s draft, and probably will be the first receiver taken. That’snot a terrible fate.
    Williams chose to leave the collegegridiron for the glitz and glamour of the NFL knowing full wellwhat the risks were. Letting him waltz back onto a college field isa slap in the face of every collegiate athlete in the nation.