Today’s letter from USC’s new president, C. L. Max Nikias, announcing the long-overdue, uh, retirement of Mike Garrett as Trojan athletic director (and heaping praise on him while kicking him to the curb), also contains this gem in the third-to-last paragraph:
The Trojan family honors and respects the USC sporting careers of those persons whose actions did not compromise their athletic program or the opportunities of future USC student-athletes. Accordingly, I have instructed the senior vice president for administration to remove athletic jerseys and murals displayed in recognition of O.J. Mayo and Reggie Bush by mid-August — before the incoming class of students moves on campus — from Heritage Hall, the Galen Center and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The university also will return Mr. Bush’s 2005 Heisman Trophy to the Heisman Trophy Trust in August.
Ouch. For Reggie, who has maintained that he did nothing wrong and he loves USC, that’s gotta sting.
Meanwhile, some Trojans on Twitter are expressing shock and disapproval of the administration’s disassociation with Bush. To which I replied in a series of tweets:
Trojans who think USC is wrong to disassociate from Bush need a reality check. Agree or disagree with sanctions and “institutional control” finding, it’s clear Reggie broke the rules. To the let that slide, now that it’s known what happened, is to declare yourself an outlaw program. I loved watching Reggie Bush play as much as the next USC fan, and nobody can take those great memories away from me. But he also f***ed us.
I’ll probably never see a finer performance by an athlete, in person, than the shows I had the privilege of watching Bush put on against Notre Dame and Fresno State in 2005. I’ll never be able to hate Reggie Bush, even if maybe I should. The memories are too awesome. But at the same time, under the rules that govern all NCAA competition, he cheated. Maybe those rules should be changed, maybe they’re enforced selectively, blah blah blah, but the rules are the rules, and he blatantly broke them. He cheated. And so, unless we Trojans are a bunch of cheaters, we really can’t continue to honor him. Period.
Ok, clearly I must have missed something where the NCAA pointed to the strong evidence demonstrating Bush’s guilt. Last I heard it was pretty much based on heresay testimony from a guy with questionable credibility to begin with. I’m not saying he’s ACTUALLY innocent, but a little evidence would be nice. Then its enitrely possible I just haven’t seen it yet and its there and I’m wrong to think the NCAA is acting without just cause.
The NCAA has tape recordings (played on Real Sports on HBO) of Reggie Bush’s father talking about how Lloyd Lake gave the family substantial amounts of money (including buying a $750,000 HOUSE for them). Reggie’s father is heard assuring Lloyd Lake that Reggie will pay him back.
Basically, Reggie took money from Lake (a former gangster) since his sophmore year. Lake and his business partner from San Diego wanted to start a new sporting agency with Reggie Bush as its first client. Lake estimates that Bush got about $300,000 from him over the years. And Reggie never paid anything back.
Reggie tried to hustle a hustler. If he had just paid Lake back, Lake never would have come forward with his allegations, and none of this trouble would ever have happened.
USC is in trouble because Reggie refused to repay $300k that he received during college. He’s either cheap or stupid.
Either way, Fuck Reggie Bush.
Casey, that’s a rather extreme take on the few details that are available to us. All indications are that Reggie’s stepfather was the one dealing with Lake — we have no certain indicators of how much Reggie was aware of — and the benefits received by-and-large appear to have gone to Reggie’s parents, not Reggie himself. Not to mention, had Reggie reported what was going on, he likely would’ve been declared ineligible. I am disappointed Reggie didn’t come clean and that we don’t have legal testimony or a deposition to point to, but I’m not going to hang the guy in effigy because his mom married a greedy scumbag.
“Ok, clearly I must have missed something where the NCAA pointed to the strong evidence demonstrating Bush’s guilt.”
“I’m not going to hang the guy in effigy because his mom married a greedy scumbag.”
I’m sure you guys would be this fair to Jimmy Clausen or Golden Tate in a similar situation. The only people talking this way are USC fans. Reggie Bush screwed USC over by not cooperating with the NCAA. Nice way to show his love for the school. Regardless of whether he’s truly guilty or not, he’s the one that messed up and ruined opportunities for the current USC players. Man up, disown this guy, and stop covering for him.
1) What kcatnd said.
2) It’s one thing to say the sanctions are too harsh, or that the NCAA’s finding re: lack of institutional control is based on shoddy evidence. But to argue that Bush himself didn’t know his family was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from an agent (or wannabe agent)? Give me a break!! This is pure homerism and denialism. It makes us look terrible as USC fans to be even saying these sorts of things out loud. If you heard a Notre Dame or UCLA or SEC fan saying similar things in equivalent situations, you’d laugh you ass off, and rightfully so. It’s preposterous. Bush is either greedy & corrupt, or criminally moronic for not knowing what was going on. Either way, he’s responsible, whether or not you think USC is responsible.
Remember, we’re not talking about a criminal conviction here — Reggie Bush isn’t entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. (And it’s unreasonable to expect the NCAA to prove guilt to that level of certainty without subpoena power.) Bush was, at one time, entitled to the initial benefit-of-the-doubt, but he’s long exhausted that: there is plenty of evidence now to reasonably conclude that he screwed USC over in a variety of ways. Even if we don’t know the exact parameters of what he did, what he knew & when he knew it, we know more than enough to, if not “hang the guy in effigy,” certainly, at a minimum, unequivocally support the university’s decision to disassociate from him and his tainted accomplishments — which is not the same thing as supporting the NCAA sanctions, so stop conflating the issues, please.
Give me a break Casey. There’s 0 evidence outside of hearsay in this whole thing. If there’s a recording between Lake and Reggie Bush’s father, that’s not Reggie Bush. The allegations were that Reggie Bush was given $300,000 from a convicted felon while the felon was in prison. The felon allegedly borrowed most or all of the money from his mom, sister, and brother-in-law because the felon didn’t have a job or source of income. None of the people who loaned the money can produce a single withdrawl slip, receipt, or anything to back up their stories. It’s total bunk. None of the people involved were sports agents, and to this date none of the people have ever respresented a professional athlete, or anyone for that matter. I don’t even know if the convicted felon ever got a job. He needs to pay a lot of money back to his mom, btw.
Having said that, if I were the new prez I’d do everything the exact same way. Erasing Reggie from the past is in the best interest of the University today. I love how USC said they didn’t want someone with a questionable background to represent the Trojans and sent the Heisman back, but they still have OJ’s jersey retired and his Heisman. Reggie will be back someday, but this is the right thing to do today.
@Brendan
While you are right that there is no legal grounds for presumption of innocence, is it still wrong to be upset that the NCAA doesn’t act with that in mind? That they make these earth shattering decisions based more on what they want to have happen than what the evidence supports?
If the evidence is there, fine, do something about it. If the evidence is NOT there, even if we all suspect that Bush did something wrong, there should be little to no punishment.
How can anyone honestly defend the NCAA’s actions if their only solid evidence is a taped phone call between Bush’s father in law and Lake? Especially the level of sanctions layed down because of it. That people continue to defend the NCAA is a sign of whatever the opposite of homerism is, i dunno jealousy? People wanted SC to fall because of how damn good they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reacted the same way to allegations at Florida or Texas. Let the punishment fall without showing the guilt was there, and oh yeah lets make it spectacular because surely any team that did that well was cheating.
Again I point out that the consequences for allegedly being involved with an agent are far far FAR worse than commiting, you know, ACTUAL crimes. If Bush had commited armed robbery and killed someone while he was at SC and it was only discovered years after you know how many games USC would have had to forfeit? Zero. As far as I’m concerned any punishment for off field behavior that seeks to nullify onfield actions is completely and utterly unjust, but then I suppose thats a side issue really.
All you need to know is that The NCAA board of sanctions is chaired by the former Miami AD, Paul Dee, who was forced to resign his position at Miami in disgrace around 1995 when the athletic department falsified Pell Grant applications to steal $220,000 from the federal government. It was the largest “Federal fraud case in Pell Grant history”. Moreover, the University provided over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Miami football players, under Paul Dee’s watch.
And this guy is now policing the morality of the NCAA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dee
I do know of at least one receipt, signed by Reggie Bush, for a hotel in Vegas that was paid for by Lake. They showed that on Real Sports also.
I’m not sure why people want to do these acrobatics to exculpate Reggie. You have to believe so many implausible things — that Reggie “magically” obtained thousands of dollars to buy a new car; that he could spend $3,000 a month going out because he was making money… doing… what? That an organization formed exclusively to court Bush during his USC tenure (New Era), with multiple principals and $100,000+ budgets, somehow never dealt with Reggie directly but only his stepfather, etc.
All this said, I’m mostly mad at Reggie for NOT covering things up. It was stupid to do this in the first place, but he could have made the whole business go away just by paying off Lake. Apparently he doesn’t think that the USC legacy is worth a tiny fraction of his wealth. That’s why I’m pissed at him.
Agreed that the NCAA sanctions are crap. I don’t think they have any evidence that USC was knowledgeable or complicit in Bush’s activities. I hope we can get rid of some of that stuff in court.
David, you apparently missed the last sentence of my comment:
Your whole response is a defense of your anti-NCAA position. But I’m not defending the NCAA. I’m saying that USC’s decision to disassociate from Bush is right & proper. That’s a distinct issue from whether the NCAA was right or wrong, heavy-handed or fair, etc. Put the NCAA aside and ask whether, based on what we know about the facts, USC should continue to honor Reggie Bush. That’s the question. And it leads me to the other problematic aspect of your comment, which is this statement, setting up an unsupportable and fake distinction:
You don’t actually mean this. You think you do, but you don’t. I’ll prove it to you, by presenting a list of things that are “off field behavior”:
• Taking performance-enhancing drugs
• Betting on your own team’s games
• Paying off the refs
ALL of those things take place “off the field.” But what you really mean, of course, is “behavior that directly impacts the competitive balance on the field.” Fair enough — except that makes the analysis much more complicated, because allowing non-amateurs to compete in an amateur sport DOES impact the competitive balance on the field! Granted, the impact isn’t as direct as steroid use or ref-bribing, but it’s still there, in two senses: 1) most directly, Reggie Bush was ineligble to play NCAA football in 2005, but did so anyway, and USC was obviously better with him than without him, and 2) more globally and controversially, if Reggie Bush and all the other Reggie Bushes of the world are allowed to play NCAA football with no consequences, even though they’re formally ineligible to do so, then players who want to “pull a Reggie Bush” will naturally gravitate to teams where they can get away with it than to teams where they can’t.
But forget #2 if you don’t buy it, because I realize that gets into the whole “institutional control” argument. #1 alone is enough. A better analogy than steroids and betting and ref-bribing would perhaps be the Chinese gymnastics team that everyone believes was using underage gymnasts. Does it impact competitive balance to play with ineligble athletes? Of course it does! Is it a form of “cheating”? Of course it is! This isn’t even debatable.
But you might say, that’s worse, because even if the primary purpose of the age eligibility rules is to protect atheletes’ health (not competitive balance), underage gymnasts may have certain physical advantages over gymnasts of allowable ages. Okay, fine, then how about this: suppose the NFL had maintained a lifetime ban on Michael Vick being allowed to play, because of his illegal off-the-field activities. But then suppose Michael Vick undergoes plastic surgery so that he’s unrecognizable, legally changes his name, and walks on to a team under his false identity. And suppose he wins the MVP. And then later, it’s discovered that he’s actually Michael Vick, and therefore was ineligible to play in the NFL due to his lifetime ban (which was imposed for reasons that had nothing to do with competitive balance). Should he be allowed to keep his MVP award? More to the point, should the team that he deceived continue to honor him, keep his jersey retired, etc.?
Was Reggie Bush a better athlete because some shady wannabe agent was funnelling money to his family? Of course not. But he was ineligible to play in college because that happened, and yet he played anyway, and that fact impacted the competitive balance. To say it didn’t is to, ultimately, deny that the NCAA’s amateurism requirement has any significance whatsoever.
@Brendan, taking steroids would affect on field performance, my choice of words was perhaps off on that one.
Second, I missed your line about USC’s actions being right, but I also said above that I understand why USC did what it did, I just don’t like that they had too.
@Casey, I’m not trying to say Bush is innocent, I’m trying to say the NCAA case against him is paper thin. USC is being punished for their success and for the NCAA to try and prove that they aren’t the impotent fools that they were accused of being. The problem is that the whole damn process is screwed up. The lack of evidence, the inordinately harsh punishments, the inability of the school to appeal to a higher authority in any way. It’s like they have been tried in the Italian justice system (see for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_knox)
My position is the same for any school and any player. Where the bigger dividing line really is, is between kids that come from upper-middle-class backgrounds (e.g. Matt Leinart) and kids that come from lower-class backgrounds (e.g. Dwayne Jarrett and Reggie Bush). Not incidentally, issues of race get involved as well. As a real-life example, nobody ever had a problem with Matt Leinart’s dad paying for Leinart to have a posh pad in downtown LA, but with Dwayne Jarrett being there as Leinart’s roommate and not paying 50% of the rent — now there’s a violation we have to go after! Invariably, the guys who bear the bulk of the compliance challenges are poor, black athletes, and if anything, Notre Dame is less likely to run into that problem than USC.
As far as Reggie screwing over USC, one can definitely draw that conclusion. But none of us were in Reggie’s shoes. What did he have to lose? What did he have to gain? I am not going to fault the guy for pursuing what he and his legal counsel decided was in Reggie’s best interest, even if the outcome of that meant something that might not have been in USC’s best interest.
What this boils down to for me is, a poor kid with phenomenal talent had a stepfather who was willing to break some rules and cash in on that potential, and Reggie was put in a spot that is easy to judge him on in hindsight, but in his shoes he was probably very uncomfortable. All the kid did was buy a nice suit for the Heisman ceremony, and a used Chevy Impala (definitely not the kind of car that would attract any kind of attention. Do you know how many kids on their way to the NFL buy flashy stuff in their last year of college using credit cards and other lines of credit via parents and whatnot? How about, just about all of them! Because they know once they are in the NFL, the interest on that line of credit is chump change, and they’ll pay it back later.
So yes, I am disappointed in Reggie, but as Tupac might say, “I ain’t mad at cha”. Like David said, “the whole damn process is screwed up”.
What this boils down to for me is a system designed to help Colleges steal the labor of major college athletes-rich and poor.
Competitive balance? Many years ago a baseball team owner bought a free agent pitcher named “Catfish,” and forever changed the competitive balance of baseball. Wasn’t it great??? Capitalism at its’ best. The entire point of recruiting is to alter the “competitive balance.” AD’s and coaches lose their jobs if they don’t alter the competitive balance.
But we continue to pay lip service to the notion that our “jocks” must be amateurs. They have never been, and one hopes never will be. The labor and risk inherent in major college football demands compensation, and the world would be a better place if we formalized the arrangement.
The NCAA periodically needs to prove that players must “care” about their rules. And, they respond to trivia as if it were part of a string of major felonies. Remember, SMU? No one else does either.
Finally, there is the University. The entire argument against Bush is the highly legalistic claim that he did something wrong during a particular football season. OK…why OJ??? What incredible hypocrisy.