| Rapper Lil’ Romeo planning to play basketball for USC |
Lil’ Romeo says he’s bound for the University of Southern California, where if all goes according to plan, he could be Romeo Miller, Trojans’ basketball player.
The teenage hip-hop star, a high school junior, has committed to play basketball for the Trojans in 2008, Dave Lindsay, a spokesman for Lil’ Romeo’s online label, UrbanDigital Records, said Friday.
USC spokesman Dave Tuttle declined to confirm or deny the report, but said the university hasn’t received a signed letter of intent from the rapper, who is just a high school junior.
"We can’t comment on any recruits or potential recruits until we have a signed letter. That’s an NCAA rule," Tuttle said.
Lil’ Romeo, whose full name is Percy Romeo Miller, is currently a guard on his Beverly Hills High School team.
"Basketball has run in the family," Lindsay said, noting the rapper’s father, hip-hop mogul Master P, had tryouts with two NBA teams in the 1990s.
"In the future, I want to be an NBA player. That’s my goal," Lil’ Romeo told The Associated Press in a 2003 interview.
At the time he was 14 and just 5-foot-6. He acknowledged then that his goal might go unrealized if he didn’t add another 12 inches of height.
He’s 17 now and 6-1, a little more than halfway toward that goal
