by Kyle Golik
College football offseason is always a prime opportunity to rekindle a potpourri of topics that certainly stoke the fires of fans. When you think of the cavalcade of topics that will certainly come up, you will get “Is Miami back?”, “Notre Dame’s relevancy”, “SEC versus The World”, and the continued justification that the College Football Playoff is a true playoff.
Former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2012, invoked a topic that to me is among the sport’s most annoying topics: Reggie Bush getting his Heisman Trophy back.
Manziel “summoned up the courage” to take to X to deliver this bold proclamation, "After careful thought and consideration, I will be humbly removing myself from the Heisman trophy ceremony until @ReggieBush gets his trophy back, doesn't sit right with my morals and values that he can't be on that stage with us every year. Reggie IS the Heisman trophy. Do the RIGHT thing @NCAA the ball is in your court."
Let’s consider Manziel’s track record for a second here, from the Netflix documentary Untold: Johnny Football how Manziel avoided NCAA sanctions by hiding money and through schemes laundering it through various channels so he could not be punished.
Manziel may be sincere about his conviction about Reggie Bush, but anyone who watched the documentary or has followed or covered Manziel since his "Johnny Football" days at Texas A&M in 2012 and 2013 realizes he covets being the center of attention at anything he does and never puts in the work.
Manziel putting his two cents in on this subject is a continuation of the “comedy of errors” that is Manziel’s life.
What makes the Bush Heisman return talk annoying is applying current rules to a period of time when those rules didn’t exist.
Yes, the NCAA established name, image, and likeness rules in 2021 to allow athletes to be compensated, but those did not exist in 2005.
Here's a good analogy: If you got a speeding ticket going 75 in a 65 and paid a fine in 2005, and you drive down the same road today and the speed limit is now 75, are you going to ask for your fine money back? No court or municipality in this country would take this even seriously if you went to court to sue for your money back.
Southern California and Bush were punished for the lack of oversight over Bush's receiving improper gifts, which led to sanctions based on the rules in 2005. How can we blame folks in 2005 for not having the foresight of what rules will be nearly 20 years later?
The Heisman Trust, which oversees the award, has given Bush an opportunity to get his Heisman back, stating that if Bush’s 2005 season was restored by the NCAA, they would give back the Heisman Trophy.
Bush's legal team continues its pursuit of getting him the title of Heisman Trophy winner back because, let's face it, that title is worth quite a bit of money. Or maybe Bush wants his room in Nissan’s Heisman House.
Still, in all seriousness, from an autograph and memorabilia perspective, a Heisman Trophy winner can easily charge $100 to add that inscription. You figure if Bush writes that 10,000 times in his life, which isn’t out of the question, that line is worth $1 million to him.
However, there are also two perspectives Bush misses out on regarding this.
There is the noble perspective of owning your mistakes and being able to tell your story and influence others not to do the same things. There is something honorable about taking a “vow of poverty” of sorts and reassessing the potential of having a major impact on others as a cautionary tale.
The second perspective I often refer to as the “Pete Rose Perspective.” Bush is in the same vertical as Rose with the Baseball Hall of Fame and his lifetime ban. Rose, to many fans, is a Hall of Famer, and you can bet on induction weekend, you will see Pete Rose signing autographs somewhere in Cooperstown.
In a lot of ways, this antihero position Rose has taken has been extremely profitable and kept his name in the forefront. If Rose had made the Hall of Fame, would his name be just as big, or would it have diminished because there isn’t anything more to discuss with Rose other than being the “Hit King”?
Bush is the modern antihero, and, like Rose, will forever be recognized by fans (including yours truly) as the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner. I am not a fan of stripping or vacating wins, trophies, or championships because we all watched the games and ceremonies and saw who won. No matter how much you want us to pretend they never happened, they did.
What annoys me with the “Bush Push” for his Heisman to be returned is why we still have to go through all this in the first place. Even in 2005, the writing was starting to become clear about athletes being compensated. That movement was simply suppressed for many years until judges saw the light of day and gave it the green light.
I am and will forever be conflicted on this issue because, ultimately, Bush knowingly broke the rules and took a chance on it. He just got caught, and he isn’t willing to live with the consequences.
I look at Johnny Manziel, how he was brazen enough to literally elaborate on in a documentary, which he definitely got paid to do, how he broke NCAA rules. I look at the Heisman Trust and say, why aren’t you doing anything about that?
Even with the Heisman Trust saying that if Bush gets his season restored, they will restore the Heisman. That tells me they don’t have the courage to do it right now, and they can. How can anyone on that Trust look in the mirror and, after watching Manziel’s flippant behavior describing how he was willing to break all the rules, still manage to say he is a Heisman Trophy winner and Bush is not is the most annoying aspect of this whole thing?
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