We again interrupt this travelogue to muse about sports events back home, this time the Day of Reckoning at the University of Southern California.

Anyone who has been around the American college sports scene for any length of time could see this coming. To spend any time around Heritage Hall at USC was to pick up the vibe of “things outta control.”

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News and espn.com, the NCAA today (Thursday) will announce sanctions against the football team that will include two years of bowl ineligibility and the loss of a large number of football scholarships; the number “20” is floating around out there. Which is a lot when you have, what, 85, total?

Also in play, according to the various sources: The loss of Reggie Bush’s 2005 Heisman Trophy and perhaps forfeiting some (all?) victories from 2004 and 2005, when USC won one national title and came within seconds of winning another.

USC will appeal the ruling, the Daily News reports, but even if the punishment is pruned back … the USC football program, the best in the country for a decade,  has just been crushed under the iron wheels of the slow-moving train that is the NCAA enforcement arm.

And as I wrote two years ago, it’s not as if we didn’t see this coming. The only surprise? That it took the NCAA even longer than usual to get around to dropping the nukes on Heritage Hall.

Let me quote myself from two years ago:

“… judgment day finally is about to arrive for the USC athletic department, which for years now seems to have operated at (or over) the bounds of propriety.

“I’ve been telling people since, oh, 2003 that I expected something heavy to fall on the football program, someday. But Tim Floyd and the basketball guys may beat Pete Carroll’s team to it.”

(The NCAA did nail Floyd, the former basketball coach, before it got around to Carroll, the former football coach; USC admitted to improprieties surrounding star basketball player O.J. Mayo, and last year punished itself by forfeiting any chance for postseason play, and the hoops program does not seem involved in the punishment now coming down.)

“One thing Tim Floyd shares with Pete Carroll? Both run their programs like they are dealing with professional athletes. Not coincidentally, both men put in some serious time on the pro side of things — in the NBA and the NFL.

“I believe both carry the professional coaches’ approach to acquiring talent: Some money is going to change hands at some point. It’s business, see? That’s their background.”

Let’s provide some context here: I have been otherwise engaged, from SoCal sports writing, since the fall of 2009. I have not spent any significant time around USC athletics since the spring of 2008. However, working for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group for the first eight-plus years of the decade, I spent a lot of time on the USC campus. Watching Pete Carroll run a football practice … quite impressive, and I saw many of them.

Anyway, I am not a Scott Wolf or Gary Klein, the beat reporters for the Daily News and L.A. Times, respectively … but I saw the Trojans play … a lot. Especially the football team, which is what USC people care about. Almost all they care about, actually. I may have seen every game played by the 2004-05 teams, and if I didn’t, I missed only a handful of the 26 games from those two seasons.

And, by the way, those two teams represented the zenith of USC football in the past quarter-century, at the least (Bush, Leinart and an incredible supporting cast), and maybe in the history of the hugely successful program.

Back to my “something bad is gonna happen to them” observations from May of 2008, about the football team:

“When it comes to the concept of student-athlete, USC football is something of a farce, frankly. Blue-chip athletes stacked like cord wood, few of them showing any particular interest in academia. For the serious players, school is about staying eligible. The End. Every guy there believes he’s going to play in the NFL and plans his time accordingly. Taking real classes and getting a real education certainly don’t seem to be high on the priority lists of the star players.

“If you spend enough time at Heritage Hall, you begin to get numb to the whole semi-pro aspects of everyday life. You begin to think “this must be how it is everywhere.”

“Then you go over to UCLA and deal with the Bruins. And perhaps not all those guys could have gotten into Cal Tech … but ‘school’ seems a real concept. It’s almost shocking, making the drive from one campus to the other. Interacting with the Bruins, both in football and basketball, is like entering another world. Going from Dullsville to the Groves of Academe.

“Tim Floyd is a great Xs and Os coach. So is Pete Carroll. And Pete is massively charismatic, as well. The programs those guys run have put out some supremely interesting teams.

“But I always had a sense of ‘things out of control,’ when dealing with those programs. Of regulations winked at or overlooked. Of a certain, ‘We’re the Trojans, and the rules don’t apply to us. We are above the law.’ It’s an arrogance that is special to them.

“And now the basketball team may be headed for some serious sanctions.

“Don’t be surprised if the football program isn’t far behind.

“And don’t be stunned if Mike Garrett’s victory-drenched (and ethics-challenged) reign as athletic director comes to a sudden end.

“If anything, I’m a little surprised the Trojans skated through the NCAA mine field as long as they did.”

Well, yes.

What happens next?

First, Pete Carroll’s legacy is tarnished. Mud-spattered. He will be remembered as the guy who came to town, put USC back atop of the college football heap … but bent the rules while doing it and skipped town a few months ahead of the program being strafed by the NCAA. He will be remembered as a great coach who put some great teams on the field … but apparently had to cheat to do it. Most college football fans, across the country, would say “it wasn’t worth it” … but USC fans are different. They may well say that all that winning for 10 seasons … what’s a year or three of pain later on?

It may, however, be painful when that crystal ball from the 2005 BCS title game disappears out of the trophy room at Heritage Hall, followed by the Heisman Trophy awarded to Reggie Bush. That sort of thing really does sting, at Troy.

However, the single most interesting aspect of this, going forward, is … what happens to athletic director Mike Garrett.

If the NCAA describes this as a “lack of institutional control” … NCAA enforcement-speak for “you knew about this but let it happen,” Garrett is a goner. Which is only fair. He has smugly carried on for a decade as if the NCAA could be blown off by him and his school. (That is the single most astonishing aspect of the whole affair; the Trojans acted as if they could do what they were doing … forever. Sorta like Pete Carroll’s slogan of “Winning Forever” … that perhaps should be emended to “Cheating Forever.”)

But back to Garrett. I don’t see how he survives this. Even though he’s a Trojan and another Heisman winner, by the way. The Trojans are devoutly loyal to their own, but keeping him as AD would only invite even more NCAA wrath. He will be fired within a week. That is my belief.

What likely follows? USC drifting back into the pack of the Pac-10. Some losing seasons. Usually, players can leave a program on probation without penalty, and USC likely will have some guys who will do that.

New football coach Lane Kiffin reportedly is very angry (Daily News), but he just signed a huge contract, and now his job is no longer “keeping USC in the top 10” … but “holding the program together during the coming lean years.” He didn’t sign up for that, but he got so much money … he will stay to see what he can scrape up.

Anyway, I am by no means the only one who today is saying “I saw this coming.” But I was one of them.