Story here, courtesy of the fledgling Yahoo! Sports bureau.
I dunno. On one hand, it seems like some of the instances might truly be where someone spotted Bush’s parents because they didn’t have a credit card (!). On the other hand, this is the second or third allegation about Bush receiving payments and gifts as a USC student. When there’s smoke there is often fire.
Would the NCAA go as far to revoke games from USC’s past two seasons? Including their national championship trophy? Would the Downtown Athletic Club recall the Heisman? (If this ever happened, I hope that Vince Young would not accept it… seems a weird way to get a trophy.)
I’m torn in some ways. I don’t think that Bush cheated in his game prep, but the rules are the rules - OU booted Rhett Bomar from the school for getting paid when he was actually at practice. USC certainly has had recent issues with compliance - the issue with Leinhart and Jarrett, the dismissal of a player who tested positive for steroids. But is this one of them?
If this is true, Bush has got to be one of the most foolhardy athletes in recent memory. Stay healthy and you will bring down somewhere like 75 million when you sign your pro contract… why the need for a fancy house and cash when you can have this in a few years time?
He hasn’t broken any law that I know of, and I don’t see how the NCAA can take any action that will affect his professional contracts. According to the article, the NCAA could find him “retroactively ineligible”, which sounds like no punishment at all.
No he didn’t break any laws - if this is true, he violated NCAA rules, which could result in the forfeiture of games and the Heisman Trophy. His pro contract is 26 million, I believe, and the rest (50 million!) is from endorsements. If he’s painted as a cheat, has to return the Heisman, and USC forfeits games (and a national championship), I’d expect some of those to dry up.
I don’t think anyone has ever had to return their Heisman, not even Orenthal.
USC could also get slapped with the dreaded “lack of institutional control” tag.
Not for him, anyway. For USC, having used an ineligible player, they could have to forfeit all their wins in which he played, including their championships, retroactively. We’d all still know they won, but the official records wouldn’t show it. USC could also go on probation, including ineligibility for bowl games for a while, and have their scholarship quota reduced for a while, making them less competitive. That would result from the NCAA investigation, which would seem inevitable at this point, and its conclusions about what USC knew and when they knew it and what they did about it.
As for whether he actually did what he’s being accused of, my hunch would have to be yes.
Not because i have anything against Reggie Bush—he seems to be an amiable enough guy—but because i’m willing to bet that many of the best players at the top schools take money or other financial considerations.
On ESPN last night, they showed a quote from one of Bush’s New Orleans teammates (can’t remember his name), who said exactly the same thing. He said that if Bush did this, and they punish him for it, they should go out and punish every other player in the NCAA who gets paid. And he suggested that this would involved the majority of players at the big schools.
Over the course of history, plenty of sports have had bans on player payments, and in just about every case the ban has been circumvented or honored only in the breach. Baseball had a ban on paying players in the period before the formation of the National League in the nineteenth century, but players were paid under the table, or made up the income by taking money to throw games for gamblers. In England, there was a ban on paying cricket players, but that was similarly unsuccessful. Rugby union’s governing authorities only officially removed the ban on player payments in 1995, conceding that under-the-table payments and “shamateurism” were unstoppable, and that it would be better just to make rugby an open, professional sport.
The idea that some sports should be free of the moral tarnish of monetary rewards is all very nice, but as long as there are people willing pay athletes, and athletes willing to take the money, this sort of situation is going to occur.
I’m fairly certain most big college stars get paid. At the very least, they have someone to take care of the arrangements. Heck, Lebron James had a Hummer as a high school athlete. His mother was certainly not in a financial position to buy one.
I’m sure Bush will laugh all the way to the bank if there are any NCAA investigations.
Another freaking Bush-bashing thread? Can’t you Bush-haters ever get your fill? I’m sorry, but this is really out of bounds. Criticize the man himself if you must, but why do you think it’s appropriate to go after his kids? At least you’re leaving the girls alone for a change. But what, you think Reggie is getting a free ride just cuz he’s the president’s son? Gimme a
I was in college 20 years ago, and the top athletes were getting paid then. Even in a low revenue sport, the players had lucrative “jobs” which required little to no actual work.
I’d say that any player that has professional potential is getting money someway or another. Nearly all scholarship athletes get some additional money from boosters.
You’d be wrong. Nobody gives a flying fuck about NCAA rules.
And as far as college accomplishments being taken away, nobody gives a fuck about them either; certainly not those offering endorsements.
Your college (or highschool for those like King James who skip the NCAA altogether) accomplishments have the same relevance to your pro career (including endorsements) as your high school grades have at a job interview: zero.
Frankly, if Bush scored a few bucks out of his college stardom, I applaud him. The schools, the sponsors and the TV networks make millions and millions of dollars out of college football players and the players get paid jack shit (and most of them don’t make the pros, if if they do it’s very briefly.) It’s exploitation on a grand scale, professional sports without the bother of paying the athletes, and the hypocrisy of everyone making a mint while deploring the notion that the athletes might scrape a few bucks off the bottom is staggering.