The Mike Morgan rumor mill has not lost any of its virility, and it’s no wonder — absolutely nothing about the situation adds up, and the parties concerned refuse to address the real cause.

First, let’s take what’s been slowly trickling out: The latest published report by Tony Morrell of GamecockCentral.com states that Morgan complained about his household Time Warner Cable bill, some person or persons at Time Warner got their feathers ruffled and applied sufficient pressure to oust Morgan from his nearly decade-old position.

I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t pass the smell test. As someone who delivers strong opinions regularly and has been doing it for close to 10 years, I’ve had more than one advertiser upset enough to pull their ads and kick our paper out of their locations. It’s part of the business that you live with when you deal in opinion. But never, at any paper I’ve ever worked for or in any instance I’ve ever heard of in the newspaper business, has an advertiser — even as large a one as Time Warner Cable — been able to dictate editorial content to any degree, much less call for someone’s head and have it delivered to them with Roadrunner speed.

Another smell test failure is the piece of fiction that the public relations folks at USC hastily cobbled together in announcing the “resignation.”  Just to revisit that odious garbage, here’s the offending sentence that opens the statement:

“COLUMBIA, S.C. (April 21, 2009) - Mike Morgan has resigned his duties as the play-by-play announcer for South Carolina men's basketball and baseball effective immediately in order to pursue other professional opportunities, ISP Sports announced today.”

This is an absolute falsehood. Morgan in no way left on his own in mid season, leaving USC high and dry, to pursue some job that he’s clearly not yet taken. Otherwise, were USC’s statements true, Morgan would already have announced where he was headed — only a moron leaves a great job that he loves with no notice without another job in hand. You certainly don’t quit so you can spend more time putting your resume out there in hopes of getting another gig, and Morgan is nobody’s fool. Apparently, though, USC thinks we all are if they honestly expect people to believe he resigned of his own volition.

So, USC was not honest in its release. Sadly, that’s about the only real fact we have in this situation since Morgan either will not or cannot tell the true version of what went down. Let’s look at another questionable statement, this time from none other than USC athletics director Eric Hyman, who was quoted by The State newspaper as saying it was “an ISP issue.”

Yet again, the smell test registers “failure.” I have a friend who has intimate knowledge of radio operations in Columbia, including Citadel and ISP, who tells me, and I quote, “ISP can’t blow their nose without USC’s permission” when it comes to hiring and firing the voices of Gamecock athletics. Even if it isn’t that dramatic, I tend to believe that the gist of what he’s saying is accurate. Just think about it for a second; does anyone honestly believe that ISP suits determine who calls the university’s athletic events rather than the athletics department and, specifically, the athletics director? Do you think if ISP were to suddenly decide to fire Todd Ellis that Hyman and the rest of the athletics department would do no more than simply shrug their shoulders, as happened with Morgan? I think not, and yet that’s the relationship we’re supposed to believe exists between ISP and USC, according to Hyman. I’m sorry, but that’s baloney, to put it nicely, and his nonchalance about Morgan’s release is, frankly, sickening.

To me, the key player here besides Hyman is Liz McMillan of Gamecock Sports Properties, the group that is the official liaison between ISP and USC. I believe her role was absolutely critical in this decision. It is my understanding from talking to people close to the situation that her relationship with Morgan was a cool one at best, probably as cool as her relationship with Ellis is warm and cozy — that much is no secret to anyone who has covered USC football for any length of time.

And speaking of that relationship, what still doesn’t wash with me is how Ellis could keep his job despite having been named prominently in a federal lawsuit due to his considerable role (he lent his name, he lent his position as the voice of Gamecocks football and he lent his actual voice) in propagating the bilking of money from thousands of people with the BurnLounge pyramid scheme. It also bears noting here that I have it on good authority that Ellis himself signed up McMillan to BurnLounge and that she also was a member.

For former sideline reporter Rob DeBoer’s role in the business the university wasted little time cutting all ties with him, but Ellis received not even a suspension and remains to this day comfy in his position as the football play-by-play announcer despite that fact and despite his lack of qualifications for the job in the first place and his subsequent poor performance, in mine and many fans’ estimate, at it since. (By the way, the Federal Trade Commission finally settled with the owners of BurnLounge in February, with the owners agreeing to pay back $20,000. The business itself had been shut down since the FTC levied charges in June 2007.)

I’m certain that Ellis’ contract has to contain some type of morals clause, and yet despite the fact he helped defraud people Eric Hyman chose to look the other way. To me, that’s a stunning lapse of judgment by Hyman and USC, one I’m still shocked the academic side of the university hasn’t addressed.

What all that tells me is that Ellis has powerful friends willing to protect him even when he embarrasses the program on a national level and actively defrauded South Carolinians. Trust me, I was pitched BurnLounge by a musician friend of mine, and as soon as he started talking about signing up friends it was patently obvious it was a pyramid scheme. I know many people who had the same experience and rejected it outright immediately.

Was Todd Ellis, a licensed attorney for crying out loud, that stupid? If he wasn’t, and I’m inclined to think he’s not, then he knew exactly what this money-making scam was and willfully engaged in it. I’ve been taken to task on message boards for bringing Ellis into this conversation about Morgan, but the lesson here is too obvious to ignore: Ellis gets involved with an illegal racket and keeps his job, Morgan, whose professional and personal reputation is beyond reproach and who enjoys the same affection afforded former longtime announcer Bob Fulton, allegedly complains about his cable bill to an advertiser and gets canned the year after he’s won his third Broadcaster of the Year award. That’s how USC operates, and it’s a legitimate outrage.

I believe either Hyman, McMillan or both (you notice that in Morgan’s lengthy statement right after his release he thanked many people, but neither of their names were anywhere to be found) trumped up the story about Time Warner Cable as a tool to get rid of Morgan for purely personal reasons. Period. Whether those reasons were related to Morgan's role in blowing the whistle on Ellis and McMillan for BurnLounge, as fitsnews.com suggests, is open to speculation.

What I don’t understand is why Hyman let all that happen then said it wasn't his call and why McMillan can play God with someone as beloved as Mike Morgan without anyone above Hyman’s head — and I’m talking about university president Harris Pastides here — objecting or even blinking an eye over why this action was taken. Over at FITSnews.com, they’ve also spoken with people at Time Warner who essentially refute in nearly every important detail McMillan’s purported version of events, which gives even more credence to the idea that Morgan was fired as a result of a personal vendetta.

In a perfect world, Pastides would investigate the matter thoroughly and, if the reasons given were not 100 percent accurate, see that she also “resigns” in order to pursue other professional opportunities. And, while he’s at it, Pastides should review the lack of disciplinary action on the part of Hyman regarding Ellis’s BurnLounge involvement to see if appropriate discussions and actions were taken by athletics department personnel when his name first came up in the federal suit.

After all, if Pastides can tell Spurrier it’s OK to yank scholarships from students who do little more than miss workouts, he surely can look into why someone engaged in fraud was allowed to retain their job while someone who did nothing but bring class and prestige to the university had his job yanked for reasons so petty and personal that they’re absolutely disgusting to rational-minded people.

What’s clear to USC fans is that Morgan’s dismissal was a disgrace from top to bottom, and if Hyman and McMillan — forget ISP or Time Warner Cable or whomever they try to tell us made the call — aren’t held accountable, then not only is the situation a personal failure on their parts but an institutional one that stretches from the Roundhouse to the President’s door. USC fans, and Morgan himself, deserve much, much better than this.