Perhaps you watch the local news rather than SportsCenter, surf the Web for movie listings rather than hang out at CBS sportsline. or espn.com. If so, here’s the latest story rocking college sports.

O.J. Mayo was the top basketball recruit in the nation last year. He played one terrific season at USC and has declared for the NBA draft. Sunday, a very well reported and lengthy story on ESPN claimed Mayo had been receiving payments and gifts worth about $30,000 from Rodney Guillory.

Guillory is believed to be a runner for Bill Duffy Associates, a sports representation firm. Louis Johnson, a former running buddy of Guillory, with plenty of pictures to prove it, says BDA provided Guillory about $200,000 before Mayo enrolled at USC and, once there, Guillory used it on himself, but also Mayo. And guess which agency Mayo signed with.

BDA.

That’s bad.

All of this on the heels of the Reggie Bush controversy that continues to swirl. It ain’t ghostworkers at a car dealership. It’s an agency putting its hooks into an athlete even before the athlete has completed high school.

BDA says it has no relationship with Guillory other than the one that “was a prerequisite for the multiple agencies attempting to recruit O.J. Mayo.”

But spend a little time perusing all the literature out there on Mayo and Guillory and you learn more. The one that gets me is the clear conventional wisdom the go-to guy on Mayo even before USC was already Guillory and it was Guillory who approached USC about Mayo going to school there.

If it comes out some other source was paying Guillory to steer Mayo to Tim Floyd and the Trojans the story will get bigger faster, although many believe USC had to know what was going on. As is, Guillory was simply the go-between for this prep megatalent.

That’s what stuns me.

If Guillory was dealing with BDA on the side but USC on the level, wasn’t he, if not by contract but by action, representing Mayo? Wasn’t he assuming the duties of an agent?

Now, can you imagine all the top high school players in the nation with “agents” of their own. Of course, they’re called advisers, and sometimes that’s all. But sometimes it’s an AAU coach or an “event promoter” — Guillory — who reportedly first linked up with Mayo in 2005 when he paid Mayo’s high school, North College Hill of Cincinnati, $16,000 to be part of a basketball tournament Reebok was putting on in Los Angeles.

A runner, a sports agency, a shoe company and a can’t-miss phenom. It’s incestuous. We’re surprised these relationships mushroom into a scandal?

If USC had to know, there must be a scenario in which they couldn’t. It remains possible a university could do everything right and still throw a player on the court with all the credit cards, clothes and cars he could ever want provided by some third party.

Then what?