NCAA Still Has Johnson Questions

On the eve of the 1995 football season opener, USC has received a letter from the NCAA’s enforcement staff asking for a response to questions concerning star wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, the school announced Friday.

The letter was sent this week to help school officials make a decision about whether to play Johnson, a senior Heisman Trophy candidate, against San Jose State today at the Coliseum. If he is later declared ineligible, the Trojans are at risk of having to forfeit the games Johnson played.

Coach John Robinson has said Johnson will start. He has strongly supported his player.

“USC has reviewed all other information available at this time and does not believe there is sufficient credible evidence that any NCAA violation has occurred,” Athletic Director Mike Garrett said in a statement. “Therefore, it would be inappropriate for us to declare Keyshawn ineligible to compete.”

The letter reviewed what investigators have learned during their five-week examination of circumstances surrounding Johnson’s receipt of a loan from a sports agent.

Among the major issues that remain unclear is a copy of a $200 check that San Diego-based sports agent Elliott Vallin provided investigators as evidence that he, Johnson, and another sports agent, Tim Shannon, did nothing wrong.

The three claim Shannon, a former USC player who has known Johnson since 1979, gave Johnson the money in the spring of 1993. Vallin wrote the check as a favor to his then-business partner.

At the time Johnson was attending West L.A. College and said he needed the money to help pay for rent. But the copy of the check was dated May 30, 1994, when Johnson was enrolled at USC, The Times has learned. That has raised questions about the truth of the trio’s scenario.

The letter also questioned the check’s signatures. The copy given to investigators was made out to the sister of Reynaldo Spalding, a defensive end at Iowa who played with Johnson at Dorsey High. It was signed over to Spalding’s mother.

“There are a lot of controversies swirling around what is the truth,” a source familiar with the case said. “Is it Keyshawn’s check, is it [Spalding’s] check? Is that the only check?”

The copy of the check also could be important because it corroborates some of Vallin’s statements on taped telephone conversations he had earlier this year with Jessie Martinez, the agent recruiter who delivered the tapes to NCAA officials.

The telephone tapes initiated the inquiry because Vallin said numerous times that he gave Johnson $1,200.

However, Vallin told investigators and The Times that he made up the $1,200 to tease Martinez because the two were fighting over a tax issue.

But in the taped conversations, of which transcripts were obtained by The Times, Vallin also claimed he gave Spalding $200, the same amount on the copy of the check supplied to investigators.

The NCAA has no timetable to conclude its inquiry.

Johnson told reporters this week that the investigation has been degrading.

“They are really reaching,” he said. “They have to find something, anything. They can’t call it quits.”

But one source said, “[They] have not concluded everything is OK.”