America’s sports moralists had just begun to breathe again after the hyperventilating response to LeBron’s Decision, when a new issue is sure to send them back to looking for their inhalers and paper bags.
After the extensive NCAA investigation and subsequent punishment for crimes by Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo, USC has taken action. Athletic Director Mike Garrett is gone and USC has sent back Bush’s Heisman to the Downtown Athletic Club. What they are supposed to do with it I am not sure. Does Cash4Gold accept bronze?
While I don’t condone Bush’s taking improper benefits during his time as a Trojan, I just can’t get overly wound up about USC’s newly found effort to pretend Bush never step foot on their campus.
To my mind, retro-active punishment of USC is the most ridiculous thing in the world. But then maybe I am the only one.
In a poll on ESPN.com, 54% of SportsNation says what the USC program lost as a result of having Bush on the team outweighs previous gains. How? Bush helped resurrect the Trojans. Before the Bush-era USC vacillated between mediocre and above-average. With Bush, USC played in two straight national title games and won one.
And they haven’t been back to a national championship game since he left.
So, my understanding of the poll, is that the majority of ESPN.com users believe it would be better for USC to be consistently mediocre? This point of view to me reeks of the convenience of hindsight.
How many USC fans, if asked in 2004 “would you take two national championship game appearances and one win in exchange for probation in 5 years” would say no? Not a lot. Maybe Mike Garrett, but even he would pause to think about it.
Putting aside the expunging of games – which only really matters to people who need to go back and look up records, stats and scores – what does all of this erasing of the past mean?
During his time, Bush was the most exciting player in the country to watch. He did things on the college football field that I still don’t understand. Does that mean I have to erase my memories of Bush Men In Black style?
Bush was probably one of the 6 most exciting offensive players I have seen play college football – (off the top of my head: Charlie Ward, Bush, Vince Young, Jamele Holieway and Tommy Frazier). Am I now supposed to pretend that didn’t happen?
Yes, he broke rules. But the particular rules he broke had no impact whatsoever on his performance or on USC’s performance on the field.
Would USC have won fewer games if he didn’t take money?
Does him taking money mean OU wasn’t embarrassed in a national title game on TV?
If anything should add an asterisk to USC’s domination in that time period, it is continuing steroid busts that have occurred of players in and around USC at that time – the Ting brothers and Brian Cushing come to mind.
But after seeing that poll, I started wondering if I am the only one. Are my memories of watching Bush dominate the opposition coloring my view on what is justice? So I posed the following question to my THH cohorts today.
“Does Reggie Bush’s retro-active tainting of everything USC did change your thoughts about that team? Will you mentally add an asterisk to that team in your memories?”
The responses:
Turner: No asterisk. They were great and Reggie getting a few thousand more dollars in college then I ever made will never change that.
Shadow: No. I never feel that way when it is money involved (unless the money also involved point shaving or something like that).
SIDEBAR: To Shadow’s point: if expunging wins from a team is punishment for illegal activities, what would be the punishment for point-shaving? Expunging losses? Switching the result of the game to the team covering the spread? Congratulations, the 1978-79 Boston College Eagles just went undefeated and covered every spread.
And remember Turner is a Sooner fan. If anyone would want to pretend that the Bush allegations change history, it should be a fan of the team that lost 55-21 in the national title game to Bush’s Trojans.
So who are the 54% of the country that feels USC is worse off for having the Bush era? Are they people that are too young to remember Bush playing? Do they not watch college football? Or more likely are they naïve fans who believe every athlete is a saint and when they later learn that isn’t the case feel betrayed and would like to pretend that whole sordid affair never occurred.
To me, college football games are like losing your virginity. Once it has happened it has happened. No matter what you find out later doesn’t change that you did the deed.
You can pretend all you want that it didn’t happen, but the memories will always remain.
