Who Really Cares?

BUSH STORY GROWS, DOES ANYONE CARE?

When the story broke regarding allegations that Reggie Bush and/or his family received money and/or other benefits from folks in the San Diego area who planned to represent Reggie once he made it to the NFL, it was a huge deal.

The accusations, and Reggie's handling of them, arguably dropped him out of the top spot in the 2006 draft.  And the evidence, developed primarily by Charles Robinson and Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports, seemed to indicate that something happened.  Something that ultimately could require Reggie to surrender a certain trophy featuring a certain facemaskless figure throwing an awkward stiff arm with both feet planted on the ground in a clumsily wide stance.

But something else has happened over the past two years.  Even as the proof has continued to mount, creating a quietly inevitable sense that, eventually, Bush will have to give up the hardware, we wonder whether the general public cares about the case.

There's a book on the subject that comes out on January 15 (the timing of the release, for sales purposes, is very questionable), and an exclusive excerpt on Yahoo! Sports.  We started to read it, and that's when the light bulb finally came on.  Though it might have simply been the adult ADD talking, I could no longer force myself to dig into the minutiae of the matter.

I get it.  Bush and his family allegedly got money.  And there's plenty of evidence that might make the "allegedly" eventually disappear from that sentence.  I get it.  He apparently was getting paid when he shouldn't have been getting paid.  I get it.  It's wrong.  I get it.

And try as I might I just don't care anymore.      

It makes us wonder who, if anyone, really does.  USC fans might be privately worried about losing a national championship that has already been fully celebrated, but beyond that don't care.  Saints fans aren't interested in shelling out a double-sawbuck for the privilege to read bad things about Reggie.  Casual football or sports fans surely won't be sufficiently motivated to turn the book into a best seller.  And any Reggie Bush haters out there have surely had their venom neutralized by the fact that, in the pro game, he's just a guy.

The book, we predict, is not going to vault to the top of the Amazon.com or New York Times best-sellers lists.

It would be much different if Bush had become Gale Sayers, or even Maurice Jones-Drew.  Or if the Saints were still alive in the 2007 playoffs.  From a right/wrong standpoint, that shouldn't matter.  As a practical matter, it does.

And so while Yahoo! continues to do quality journalistic work on this one, uncovering documents that implicate Bush and other witnesses who corroborate the pending claims, Bush's case is ultimately no different than that of many other college players who get paid by someone while still technically "amateur" athletes.  

So when the good folks at The Big Lead rightly ask why ESPN is ignoring the Bush book, the answer might simply be that Bristol, like many of us, has moved on.

We're not saying we'll never mention the case again.  But this isn't Woodward and Bernstein stuff.  And our apathy about the situation speaks to much a deeper problem with college sports -- one that is so deeply engrained in the culture that it perhaps can no longer be termed a "problem."

It's a reality.  Kids who excel at college football are going to get paid.  By someone.

And maybe, in a roundabout way, there's some justice in that.  Given the revenue they generate in return for sacrificing their bodies in the name of an "education" that most of them wouldn't have wanted anyway, they should get paid.

Friday, January 11, 2008, 02:04 PM PST [General]

We've all seen the outrageous headlines, the claims that USC's dynasty could be brought down by "Bushgate."

The National Enquirer has nothing on Yahoo or the backers of the new book "Tarnished Heisman" when it comes to making big claims -- sources like Yahoo keep  suggesting that USC could lose one or both of the National Titles USC earned for the 2003 and 2004 seasons over the Bush mess.

The problem with all these suggestions, all these overly-dramatic innuendos, is that there still isn't any EVIDENCE out there that suggests that any of those claims COULD even possibly come true.

The documented "evidence" of any type of payments to the Bush family consists of three things:

1.  Papers (let's assume them to be genuine for now) showing that in March of 2005 Reggie Bush stayed in a Las Vegas hotel with an agent and at the expense of an agent, with billings of $623.63.  (It is claimed that Reggie Bush actually reimbursed the agent, so it was simply a matter of having the charges placed on a card and him later repaying the agent for the charges Bush made.)
2.  Papers (again, let's assume them to be genuine for now) showing that a newly started management company purchased a San Diego area home in March of 2005 that was then occupied by Reggie Bush's mother and step-father from April 2005 to April 2006.  (The terms on which they stayed there remain unclear.)
3.   Papers (again, let's assume them to be genuine for now) showing that some airline tickets were purchased in November 2005 by someone related to an agent that were supposedly used by members of Reggie Bush's family to attend the USC-Cal game in November 2005.  (Again, it is claimed that the family reimbursed the agent, and that the booking was the only courtesy they received.)