Okay, true, I yell a lot in my car, but this time was different. I was driving down an L.A. freeway when I saw something that made me pound on my steering wheel and howl, “Yes! I agree! I completely 1,000 percent agree!”
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It was a big yellow billboard with a giant picture of the Heisman Trophy and massive red letters saying, “Hey NCAA … Give Reggie Bush Back His Heisman!”
Maybe you forget, but the University of Southern California’s Reggie Bush and his 360-degree hips earned the Heisman Trophy in 2005 with one of the jaw-dropping-est seasons in college football history. He did things that wore out the 30-second replay button on my remote.
But Bush lost that Heisman — and USC had to give up its 2004 national title and 14 wins from 2004 and 2005 — after news emerged that his family had accepted gifts, including his parents living rent-free in a San Diego-area house, from a couple of sketchy wannabe sports marketers.
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In those bad old days, colleges could make millions on major talents such as Bush in TV money and alumni donations and ticket sales, while players got zip.
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Back then, players who broke the vow of poverty were punished. Today, it’s perfectly fine. Because now there are NIL deals (name, image and likeness), which means college athletes can and do get paid for what they can do on a field.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams — the 2022 Heisman winner, and nobody’s taking it away from him — has NIL deals with AT&T, Beats by Dre and a skyscraper of other companies. His annual valuation by the NIL raters at On3 is $2.6 million. That makes monthly rent for the Bush family look like a 25-cent weekly allowance. And Williams isn’t even No. 1 on the college football chart: That would be fresh-out-of-high-school QB Arch Manning, with a $2.9 million valuation before he’s even taken a single snap for the University of Texas.
It’s not just high-schoolers and college kids getting paid now. A 9-year-old in Los Angeles named Ghalee Wadood Jr. — the MVP of Snoop Dogg’s Youth Football League — scored a six-figure NIL deal.
The kid is going into third grade! That’ll buy a lotta Legos.
Ghalee, who’s also into baseball, track and karate, was signed this summer by Family 4 Life, a sports and entertainment agency that also represents NFL players. I’ve got zero problem with this. You don’t think Macaulay Culkin got paid?
We don’t know what the first figure of those six figures is, but when asked what he’d do with the money, young Ghalee said: “Get a house, get some shoes.”
I definitely need to buy stock in this kid.
So, to recap, Reggie Bush is still being punished for something that basically isn’t just acceptable today, it’s essential. If you aren’t getting money for your players these days, you might as well be Swarthmore.
You know what NIL also stands for? “Now it’s legal.”
So … it’s time to give it back. Give back the Heisman. Give back the 14 USC wins. Give back Reggie Bush his good name.
It’s all so frustrating, it makes me want to eat a lightbulb. So I called the guy who put up the Bush billboards, Brian Kennedy, just to thank him.
He’s 82 years old, and he owns Regency Outdoor Advertising. This spring, he started putting up 15 of the billboards, all on L.A. freeways. He figures it at 200,000 sets of eyes per billboard per day. That works out to … a lot. “I’ve gotten 150 emails and letters about it, and 149 agree with me,” says Kennedy, a longtime USC booster. “Reggie got screwed, and this is my fight to get it back. Enough is enough.”
He says Bush himself called to say thanks, but that isn’t why Kennedy did it: “I just want this fixed.”
So does the Heisman Trust, apparently. They’re the people who give out the trophy. When NILs kicked in two years ago, the trust issued a statement about Bush that said it looks forward to “welcoming him back to the Heisman family” — if the NCAA does the right thing.
Bill Saporito: The NCAA’s position on not paying athletes is worse than tone deaf
It hasn’t. Of course not. These bureaucrats instead crossed their arms and huffily announced that nothing had changed regarding Bush: “The NCAA infractions process exists to promote fairness in college sports.”
Give me a break. These are the people who cashed in by the millions on young men such as Bush, who risked their knees and brains and spines playing a wildly violent game so the NCAA could fill its members’ pockets. If Bush had gotten paralyzed for life on one of his shape-shifting runs, you think the NCAA would’ve been there for him?
Here’s a simple solution: The Heisman Trust can show the NCAA how to “promote fairness in college sports” and just give the trophy back to Bush. They’re in charge of it.
Meanwhile, 9-year-olds are shopping for three-bedroom Tudors. Good. You go, Ghalee Wadood Jr. You get yours. Get yourself a house where only ice-cold root beer runs through the pipes and, if you’re as talented as people seem to think, win yourself two Heismans someday.
Then, can you please give one to Reggie?
Make sense of the news fast with Opinions' daily newsletterIt was a big yellow billboard with a giant picture of the Heisman Trophy and massive red letters saying, “Hey NCAA … Give Reggie Bush Back His Heisman!”
Maybe you forget, but the University of Southern California’s Reggie Bush and his 360-degree hips earned the Heisman Trophy in 2005 with one of the jaw-dropping-est seasons in college football history. He did things that wore out the 30-second replay button on my remote.
But Bush lost that Heisman — and USC had to give up its 2004 national title and 14 wins from 2004 and 2005 — after news emerged that his family had accepted gifts, including his parents living rent-free in a San Diego-area house, from a couple of sketchy wannabe sports marketers.
ADVERTISING
In those bad old days, colleges could make millions on major talents such as Bush in TV money and alumni donations and ticket sales, while players got zip.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Back then, players who broke the vow of poverty were punished. Today, it’s perfectly fine. Because now there are NIL deals (name, image and likeness), which means college athletes can and do get paid for what they can do on a field.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams — the 2022 Heisman winner, and nobody’s taking it away from him — has NIL deals with AT&T, Beats by Dre and a skyscraper of other companies. His annual valuation by the NIL raters at On3 is $2.6 million. That makes monthly rent for the Bush family look like a 25-cent weekly allowance. And Williams isn’t even No. 1 on the college football chart: That would be fresh-out-of-high-school QB Arch Manning, with a $2.9 million valuation before he’s even taken a single snap for the University of Texas.
It’s not just high-schoolers and college kids getting paid now. A 9-year-old in Los Angeles named Ghalee Wadood Jr. — the MVP of Snoop Dogg’s Youth Football League — scored a six-figure NIL deal.
The kid is going into third grade! That’ll buy a lotta Legos.
Ghalee, who’s also into baseball, track and karate, was signed this summer by Family 4 Life, a sports and entertainment agency that also represents NFL players. I’ve got zero problem with this. You don’t think Macaulay Culkin got paid?
We don’t know what the first figure of those six figures is, but when asked what he’d do with the money, young Ghalee said: “Get a house, get some shoes.”
I definitely need to buy stock in this kid.
So, to recap, Reggie Bush is still being punished for something that basically isn’t just acceptable today, it’s essential. If you aren’t getting money for your players these days, you might as well be Swarthmore.
You know what NIL also stands for? “Now it’s legal.”
So … it’s time to give it back. Give back the Heisman. Give back the 14 USC wins. Give back Reggie Bush his good name.
It’s all so frustrating, it makes me want to eat a lightbulb. So I called the guy who put up the Bush billboards, Brian Kennedy, just to thank him.
He’s 82 years old, and he owns Regency Outdoor Advertising. This spring, he started putting up 15 of the billboards, all on L.A. freeways. He figures it at 200,000 sets of eyes per billboard per day. That works out to … a lot. “I’ve gotten 150 emails and letters about it, and 149 agree with me,” says Kennedy, a longtime USC booster. “Reggie got screwed, and this is my fight to get it back. Enough is enough.”
He says Bush himself called to say thanks, but that isn’t why Kennedy did it: “I just want this fixed.”
So does the Heisman Trust, apparently. They’re the people who give out the trophy. When NILs kicked in two years ago, the trust issued a statement about Bush that said it looks forward to “welcoming him back to the Heisman family” — if the NCAA does the right thing.
Bill Saporito: The NCAA’s position on not paying athletes is worse than tone deaf
It hasn’t. Of course not. These bureaucrats instead crossed their arms and huffily announced that nothing had changed regarding Bush: “The NCAA infractions process exists to promote fairness in college sports.”
Give me a break. These are the people who cashed in by the millions on young men such as Bush, who risked their knees and brains and spines playing a wildly violent game so the NCAA could fill its members’ pockets. If Bush had gotten paralyzed for life on one of his shape-shifting runs, you think the NCAA would’ve been there for him?
Here’s a simple solution: The Heisman Trust can show the NCAA how to “promote fairness in college sports” and just give the trophy back to Bush. They’re in charge of it.
Meanwhile, 9-year-olds are shopping for three-bedroom Tudors. Good. You go, Ghalee Wadood Jr. You get yours. Get yourself a house where only ice-cold root beer runs through the pipes and, if you’re as talented as people seem to think, win yourself two Heismans someday.
Then, can you please give one to Reggie?
