Reggie Bush Scandal

DeLeon Dallas

HHP 495

Reggie Bush Scandal

The issue I looked at was the Reggie Bush scandal that took place at USC from 2004 to 2005. Those years would have been Reggie’s sophomore and junior seasons at USC. The investigation started in 2006 with reports of Reggie’s mother and stepfather living in a house in San Diego that was rented out to them by sports marketers named LloydLake and Michael Michaels. The sports marketers also paid Reggie money, paid for his hotel stays, his suit and limousine for his Heisman trophy acceptance in 2005. USC ended up getting punished with a ban to play in post season for two years, put on probation for four years, loss of ten scholarships for three seasons, and vacating victories from December 2004 through 2005, which added up to 14 victories. I believe that USC was wrongly punished and that more of the punishment should have been placed on Reggie Bush, instead of the university getting punished for Reggie’s wrong doings. Reggie received benefits from sports marketers, not the University of Southern California.

Reggie Bush violated strict rules upheld by the NCAA mandating that college athletes refrain from offers and acceptance of preferential treatment from any entity existing internally or externally with regard to that individual academic institution. NCAA by law states in 12.3.1.2 an athlete is deemed ineligible if he or she accepts benefits from agents or marketing representatives. The rule further goes on to state that student athletes, their family or friends can’t receive benefits or loans from agents. NCAA by law states in 12.1.2.1.6 that athletes can’t receive preferential treatment, benefits or services because of the athlete’s reputation, skill, or pay back potential as a pro athlete, unless such treatments are specifically permitted under NCAA legislation.

Reggie Bush didn’t break/violate any constitutional provisions, statutes, or case law. All the rules he broke/violated are rules only for the NCAA and aren’t designated to any cases of law. Not only did Reggie Bush violate rules, but his family did too. His parents were taking a weekly allowance from sports agents and they were living in a sports agent’s home. The sports agents leased the house out for Reggie’s step father and mother. The sports agency that paid for Bush’s things was called New Era Sports & Entertainment. The sports agent’s that belonged to the company were Michael Michaels, LloydLake. Bush’s current marketing agent named Mike Ornstein and one of his employees also paid for things for Reggie. Ornstein claims that everything his company gave Bush was allowed by the NCAA because Bush interned at his marketing company during the summer of 2005 and was allowed to get some benefits since Bush interned. Ornstein didn’t file any suits against Reggie Bush and his family.

LloydLake and Michael Michaels on the other hand did file law suits against Reggie and his family for the money they let the family use. Lake and Michaels filed a law suit against Bush that would add up to $3.2 million in damages. Sources say that New Era paid for up to right around $850,000 while Michaels and Lake helped the family with their living situation and other cost. The house that Michaels let Reggie’s step father and mother stay in cost $757,000. The rent fee for one year at the house added up to $54,000, but it was free living since New Era paid for it. New Era paid for hotel stays for Reggie in San Diego, so Reggie could attend a birthday party for Marshall Faulk. New Era also gave him $13,000 to purchase and modify a 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS. Michaels himself paid $28,000 to Bush’s parents to get them out of debt they were already in.

Ornstein’s marketing company also paid for things that are in violation with the NCAA. One of Ornstein’s employees paid for airfare and a limousine for Bush’s family for the Cal vs. USC game in 2005. Ornstein believed it was fine to pay for all things because he thought that Reggie’s family had paid back the funds they used for the trip. Ornstein insists that he only paid for all these things for the better of the family. Ornstein claimed to the press that he had no idea if the loans he gave to the family violated NCAA rules or not. After Reggie turned pro he hired Ornstein as his marketing agent. Ornstein has gotten Reggie marketing deals worth $50 million since he has left college. This left New Era extremely mad because Reggie said he would sign with them, since New Era gave him money and other benefits during his 2004 and 2005 seasons at USC. Bush fired Ornstein in late 2006 as his marketing agent.

USC’s problem with all of this is that they were found violating NCAA rules by failing to exert proper institutional control. Sources found out that USC allowed sports representatives from New Era into the locker room during the 2005 season. USC allowed Ornstein and other agents to be on the sidelines during games and numerous practices during the 2005 season. The running backs coach, Todd McNair, knew of Bush’s involvement with the New Era agents. The NCAA determined that McNair provided false information and misleading information to the enforcement staff of the NCAA. McNair violated NCAA legislation by signing a document saying he had no knowledge of Reggie violating NCAA violations. USC ended up letting McNair’s contract expire in 2010, instead of renewing his contract and bringing him back to coach at USC. McNair was banned by the NCAA to do off campus recruiting for one year. USC surprisingly appealed McNair’s violations along with some of their own violations with the NCAA.

The Head Coach, Pete Carroll, was never found to have known about Reggie receiving gifts from agents. There is an assumption Carroll did know though because following the 2005 season he took the head coaching job of the Seattle Seahawks. There’s a report that says Carroll encouraged Ornstein to hire student athletes as interns at his marketing agency. Carroll happened to specifically ask Ornstein to hire football student athletes for the agency. At the hearing for the USC case Carroll denied ever saying that he asked Ornstein to hire football student athletes. Carroll said at the hearing though that he did know who was Ornstein was, but he only knew of him from his mail fraud with the defrauding of the NFL in 1995. Carroll was accused of violations by the NCAA from the hearing that he went out of his way to provide internships for football student athletes and possible agent opportunities for football student athletes before leaving college and going to the pros. Nothing was proven that he violated any NCAA rules in the case.

One case that reflects on the happenings in the Reggie Bush scandal is the Dez Bryant case of Bryant lying to the NCAA. Dez Bryant had lied about meeting with Deion Sanders at Sanders home in Texas, which took place in May 2009. In Bryant’s case he was asked if he met with Deion Sanders in May 2009 and Bryant said he had not met with him. The NCAA asked Bryant again that same year in September and he said he had no interaction with Sanders. Meeting with Sanders at his home was not a violation of the NCAA, but lying to the NCAA about meeting with Sanders was a violation. Bryant violated the NCAA by law 10.1(d) is knowingly furnishing false or misleading information. The only penalty handed out for the case was that Bryant was suspended the remainder of the season for 2009. Bryant played in two games for the 2009 season. Bryant took the same route as Bush by going to the NFL after violating NCAA rules. The University of Oklahoma State was not penalized with anything like USC was penalized with scholarships losses for three years and post season ban of two years.

USC never truly broke any violations that make sense to the world. How do you truly determine that a college institution has proper control of themselves? Almost every single university has broken some violation put forth by the NCAA or a rule was made because the NCAA didn’t like the way a university was doing some act. If a university didn’t have the institution under control, then there should be chaos happening to the university like students rioting or a mass murder at the school. Things like those activities sound more like an institution out of control. If those things were happening on a campus I would hope the government would step in and help, instead of relying on the NCAA because the NCAA seems hopeless on enforcing anything in the NCAA unless someone else goes and searches for the violations for them. The NCAA doesn’t look for any violations unless another source goes digging into a university’s athletics and academics.

For the Reggie Bush scandal a reporter for Yahoo! Sports brought up Reggie’s past for the NCAA to go and investigate or the NCAA would have never known about anything going on behind the scenes at USC. Another case has had Yahoo! Sports reporters going and finding information out on the university. The other case was the University of Miami case that took place in 2010. At the University of Miami boosters were giving the football players money just like what was happening at the university in the 1980’s. Boosters came forward and confessed what they had done once the Yahoo! Sports reporters had come for them to let the world know what was going on. The boosters would pay the football players money for if they made good plays like sack the QB, return and INT for a touchdown, or lay a guy out on a block. After the Yahoo! Sports reporter had gotten one of the boosters to step forward and say what they did all of a sudden another booster stepped forward and said he was paying the players too. The reporter ended up bringing more bad publicity then what the university could handle. More and more people started believing that there were more boosters out there that were paying the players and believing that the boosters have never stopped paying the players since the 1980’s scandal.

A university should not be punished when only one or a couple people affiliated with the university break rules set forth by the NCAA. The NCAA needs to realize that a university is made up of a lot more people than one or two. Instead of punishing the university, the NCAA needs to go after the perpetrators who violated the rules and throw the book at them with any possible punishment they can get. For the Reggie Bush scandal it seems as if the university got all the punishment and Reggie didn’t get punished, nor removed of any accolades. The only award that Reggie lost was the Heisman trophy he won his junior season, but the Heisman trustee board said he didn’t even have to return it because the board didn’t want the trophy to be the only vacated one in history. To this day the Heisman Reggie won has not been returned to the board like Reggie said he was going to do. USC on the other hand got struck with a lot of punishments. They lost 30 scholarships over the span of three years, put on probation for four years, and were banned from post season play for two years. These punishments didn’t take effect until 2010 when the case finally came to a close. It looks like Reggie should be the bad guy here instead of the University of Southern California.

With these punishments put on USC I know they have lost players to recruit to the university. What football player would want to go to a university that isn’t eligible for the post season? This excludes the university from the conference championship and any bowl championship game if they got a bid to one that is. Not a lot of players are going to want to play for a team that has no shot at going to the national championship. It’s already hard enough on USC to find recruits with that punishment alone, but then the NCAA has to say that they have ten less scholarships to hand out every year for three years. Those two punishments make it extremely difficult for USC to recruit any good recruits for the football program. Plus with all these punishments placed on the university it makes the university look bad as a whole, not just the football program. With the punishments they received it could stop kids from going there that are only students because the students will think to themselves “Do I really want to go to a university with the image that USC has?” The NCAA doesn’t realize they have hurt USC in more ways than just hurting the football program.

In conclusion, USC should be free of the violations that the NCAA has charged them with because Reggie Bush and Todd McNair are the only two people that did anything wrong while being a part of USC. The only people that knew of anything going on outside of the university were Reggie, McNair, Ornstein, Michaels, and Lake. Those are the only people that should have been brought into this case to start with in the first place. USC’s football program should have never been punished as a whole. Two individual’s on the team do not make up, nor represent the entire team. Truly the university never broke any rules if you look at it because it’s not like the university was giving Reggie money or any benefits for that matter. The only thing USC was giving Reggie was a scholarship to go to the university. Since when is a scholarship a violation of NCAA by laws? I feel if USC is going to be punished by the NCAA then the people that provided Reggie with the extra money and benefits should be punished too. I feel that the NCAA should have gone after Ornstein, Michaels, and Lake because those are people that supplied Bush with extra spending money, his mother and step father a house, and paying off Reggie’s parents previous debt before he came to school. I don’t see how those three men get left out of the case with no punishments going there way. It looks like the NCAA needs to go back to there by laws and change a few rules they have written in their books. USC I hope can recover from these incidents with flying colors and pursue to be the great university that they have been known to be in the past up until this point.