I feel like Conquest Chronicle's resident legal correspondent with my second court related story in as many weeks, but here goes

An attorney for USC cornerback Shareece Wright and a San Bernardino County prosecutor on Wednesday said they are optimistic about reaching a settlement in Wright’s resisting a police officer case that would allow the Trojan player to avoid pleading guilty to a felony.

From the OC Register's SC Blog

Considering the events detailed in earlier posts by Paragon, the situation surrounding Shareece's arrest seemed odd to say the least. In short, apparently Wright was at a party for a friend who was going to be deployed soon. When the police broke up the party apparently Wright refused to leave as he had been drinking and was planning to stay the night at the residence. He was not charged with anything at the time, but later on charges of resisting arrest were brought up against him.

Obviously, from the perspective of the university, it is definitely a good thing that Shareece will be able to solve this problem in a reasonable way. I honestly do not think that he deserves a felony, but at the same time he should know better than to even get himself into those kinds of situations and deserves some punishment. I am sure that it is made explicitly clear to each and every one of USC's high profile that they need to be wary of bad situations and that they are representatives of the university. Imagine all of the hoopla the national media could have created by pointing out the fact that an soon to be convicted felon had actually started a game for USC? Thankfully SC dodged that bullet.

However, stories like these are open to all kinds of spin. In fact, the NCAA phrase "lack of institutional control" springs to mind almost immediately. It is also easy to see how SC detractors could turn this story into a situation where "once again student athletes are above the law" (or something to that fact). USC has generally done a good job of handling media scrutiny and extra attention from the NCAA, but it really takes only one damning incident to turn the fortunes of a program. Let's just hope that USC continues to do a good job of controlling situations like these.