The Implications of Returning Reggie Bush’s Heisman

 

Reggie Bush: He’s baaaaaaack.

Former University of Southern California tailback Reggie Bush had his 2005 Heisman Trophy returned to him this week.  It had been “voluntarily” returned when it became clear that Bush had received improper payments to play at USC and therefore shouldn’t have had a college career at all.

The reaction to this reversal has been disquietingly positive.  Indeed, Curmie can’t find anyone other than Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms (and some of his readers, including Curmie) who thinks this decision is a travesty.  All the talking heads on ESPN nod in agreement as insufferable blowhard Stephen A. Smith intones that the action was “long overdue.”  Various other sports sites generated pretty much the same responses.

Bah.  Humbug.

Reggie Bush was indeed an incredible college football player.  He was a logical choice to win the Heisman in 2005, and he did so over some rather stiff competition.  But that was before it was revealed that he and his family had accepted payments they were fully aware were contrary to NCAA rules.  We’re not talking about buying the kid an unauthorized pizza, here, Gentle Reader.  These were serious charges, and whatever Bush may say now about his innocence, it’s unlikely that USC would have put up so little resistance had they not been pretty certain that there was a fair amount of fire to accompany all that smoke.

It’s also true that the likelihood that Bush wasn’t the only Heisman winner to have broken NCAA rules approaches ontological certainty.  Curmie can think of at least three specific individuals whose guilt has been established to a degree that far exceeds “preponderance of evidence” and is very close to “beyond reasonable doubt” if it hasn’t crossed that threshold, as well.  That doesn’t matter.  It’s the equivalent of getting stopped for going 80 in a 55.  Complaining that other cars were going just as fast isn’t going to get you out of a ticket.  Were you speeding, and not just by a little bit?  Yes?  Then sit down and shut up.

Of course, Bush and USC have been lobbying to get this reversal for some time, and Bush himself staked a claim to a position in the Narcissist’s Hall of Fame by suing the NCAA for defamation for implying (not even saying outright) what virtually everyone believes to be true: that Bush was engaged in “pay-for-play arrangements.”  The statement also says that “Previous penalties, including those that are several years old, will not be re-evaluated or reconsidered based on the recent changes to NIL rules.”  (Yes, they lied.)

Of course, with the advent of NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals, pay-for-play is pretty much happening at every college or university with Division I athletic programs (and probably others, too).  What Bush did (okay, allegedly did) nearly two decades ago would almost certainly be permissible now.  That, coupled with a threat from the likes of 2012 Heisman recipient Johnny Manziel that he’d boycott future Heisman ceremonies until Bush’s award was reinstated, gave the movement some steam.  But seriously… when, exactly, did Manziel develop those “morals and values” he describes in his tweet (or whatever those things are called now)?

Here’s the thing: ex post facto works both ways.  You can’t be charged with a crime that wasn’t a crime when you did it, and you can’t avoid at least ethical responsibility for something that was illegal when you did it but might not be now.  The Heisman Trust’s action (which we can be assured was with the concurrence of the NCAA if not indeed at their behest) is not a pardon; it’s not an act of forgiveness.  It’s a denial of reality: Bush cheated and, unlike USC (which had to surrender scholarships and vacate victories, including the 2004 national championship and the entire 2005 season), is now effectively unpunished.

But this brings up another twist.  As of now, at least, Bush has his Heisman back, but USC still doesn’t have its national championship, which was stripped from them for one reason only: Reggie Bush played on that team.  

Curmie, having grown up in Central New York, became a fan of the local Division I team, the Syracuse Orangemen, in the 1970s.  Twentysomething years later, he enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Kansas, and he’s been a loyal Jayhawk ever since.  The NCAA has stripped victories from the basketball programs at both of those schools.  The Syracuse case involves more moving parts, but the KU case pretty much boils down to one thing: improper payments made to power forward Silvio DeSousa.  There are lots of twists and turns there, including the claim that the university was unaware of an Adidas rep’s shenanigans, but it’s not Curmie’s intention to re-adjudicate that case.  

What is significant, however, is that the NCAA invalidated 15 Kansas wins: the games in which DeSousa played before being retroactively ruled ineligible by the same organization that had previously declared him eligible.  As it happens, the Jayhawks had just recently passed the University of Kentucky to become the NCAA’s winningest team in history; the NCAA verdict put the Wildcats back on top. 

Does this really matter?  No, not really.  But it does put the NCAA in a bit of an ethical bind.  If the organization at the very least signed off on re-instating Bush’s Heisman because what he did is legal now, then the same argument should logically hold for the USC team on which he played, and for the Kansas basketball team.  (Perhaps the Syracuse team should be included, as well, although there were allegations in that case other than pay-to-play.) The list of other programs similarly affected is plenty long; no need to enumerate them all.  It should be noted that those teams have already paid a price in terms of scholarships, recruitment restrictions, and the simple fact that elite players want to be assured they’ll be seen in the post-season.

Of course, there are few organizations of any kind in the world as incompetent, corrupt, and whimsical as the NCAA.  How will they handle this situation?  Curmie’s guess is that they’ll do nothing… at least until someone else sues them.

NCAA Football, Part 2: Some (Sort of) Solutions

OK, Curmie recently pointed out a handful of the manifold problems with college football as it is currently structured, especially with respect to the bowl system.  There are some issues that are insoluble, either legally (apparently) or structurally.  NIL and the transfer portal aren’t going away, but some tweaks are still possible. 

Next year’s expansion of the playoffs from four to twelve teams is stupid (it potentially adds three games to some teams’ schedules—let’s just forget about all that “student-athlete” rhetoric—but it does solve one problem and mitigate another.  There won’t be an undefeated major conference champion that isn’t given at least the opportunity to win a national title.  If you’re not clearly one of the twelve best teams in the country, STFU if you get ranked 13^th. 

Plus, there will be fewer opt-outs if there’s a national title at stake instead of the rather less impressive distinction of being the champion of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.  (Yes, that’s a real bowl game.)

But these don’t begin to solve all the problems.  Let’s take the ones Curmie identified earlier and offer some possible solutions.   

NIL is becoming the principal if not sole driver of collegiate athletics.  We can’t eliminate the system altogether, but we can impose restrictions.  For example: forbid universities from marketing their players, or seeking contributions from the public (“if you want your team to keep winning, send a check”).  To give a little perspective: it is hardly a secret that Curmie is a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks; KU is the only school from which Curmie has a degree that has Division 1 football. 

Jayhawks coach Lance Leipold was heavily rumored to be a contender for the University of Washington job after their coach, Kalen DeBoer, left for Alabama.  Curmie subscribes to an email list about KU athletics.  The most recent missive manages to whine on three separate occasions about the alleged insufficiency of KU’s NIL funds as a cause for concern.  KU, by the way, is about to give Leipold a substantial raise to his meager $5.7 million salary; it appears likely he’ll soon be able to get the large Coke with his Big Mac combo if he wants it.  Collegiate sports have been mostly about money for a long time; we’re moving towards being exclusively about money.

It would be nice to impose a cap on how much a “student athlete” could make, but that’s probably not feasible.  What could certainly be done is to make all NIL contracts include a promise by the athlete to be available to play in every game, including bowl games, except when ruled medically unable to do so or there is some other reasonable excuse (death in the family, that sort of thing).  “I’m an asshole who doesn’t want to risk injury” is not such a legitimate reason.  NIL sponsors should be permitted to claw back every nickel from players who don’t adhere to this rule.

If Curmie were in a management position with an NFL team, he’d make it clear that he’s a lot more interested in players who want their team to win and do what it takes to make that happen rather than in looking out for themselves alone.  Of course, the average NFL exec is a moron who wouldn’t come to that obvious conclusion, but even curmudgeons can dream, right?

That said, players who stand to make millions as professional athletes are indeed risking their future earnings by playing in bowl games.  They will receive insurance policies based on percentage of their anticipated future income, as determined by independent authorities; the cost of these policies will be shared equally by the NCAA and the player’s university.

The transfer portal will not be open until the day after the national championship game.  Schools who contact players from other teams will be ineligible for any post-season games, including conference championships, for one year (three years for a second offense in the three year period).  Players who advertise their availability prior to that start date will be ineligible to play for anyone for one year. 

And then there are all those bowl games that nobody has ever heard of unless your team plays in it.  Here’s Curmie’s proposal: no bowl game that includes a major conference team and attracts neither 25,000 fans to the stadium nor a TV rating of 1 (i.e., 1% of television sets in the country are tuned to the game) will continue next year.  Those numbers will be halved—12,500 fans and a rating of .5—for games between Group of 5 teams. 

Games that meet only one of those criteria will be on probation: if they reach the goals next year, great.  If their numbers improve but are still below the threshold, the bowl remains on probation.  If the numbers don’t improve, they’re gone.  No new bowl game can be played within 25 miles of the venue for five years.  (A different bowl in the same city that meets the requirements would be allowed to continue.)

Using TV ratings on Sports Media Watch and attendance figures from Wikipedia, Curmie would therefore cancel the Boca Raton and Fenway Bowls immediately, and place the Birmingham, Camelia, Cure, Famous Idaho Potato, Famous Toastery, Frisco, Hawaii, Independence, Las Vegas, Mobile, Myrtle Beach, and New Mexico Bowls on probation.

Of the five current “All-Star” games, the East-West Shrine Bowl would be allowed to continue because of its charitable cause; the others would be cancelled unless they, too, adopt a recognized charity recipient of the game’s revenues.  Such a charity must not be exclusive in terms of race, sex/gender, religion, etc. 

Even if all of these ideas were to be adopted, college football will never be the same.  Curmie supposes there’s something to be said for being upfront about the corruption of the process, but that seems rather a small consolation.  “Student athletes,” especially in football, will increasingly be regarded as commodities to be bought and sold, in large part because they’re marketing themselves that way.  But until someone comes up with a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the fall, Curmie will probably continue to watch.  Alas.

 

NCAA Football, Part 1: (Some of) The Problems

The college football season ended this week with the Michigan Wolverines convincingly defeating the Washington Huskies, 34-13, in the national championship game.  Curmie admits to being a fan of the sport despite the manifold problems associated with it: corruption, injuries (both acute and chronic), etc.

And this was a particularly good year in some ways, at least for Curmie: Cortland State, the team from the town where Curmie went to high school and where he did a few shows as an actor and technician, won the national championship in Division 3.  Dartmouth, Curmie’s undergrad alma mater, tied for the Ivy League championship.  And Curmie’s PhD school, the Kansas Jayhawks, after years of being a doormat in the Big 12 and a national laughingstock, continued their improvement, finishing 9-4 with a win over traditional power Oklahoma, a bowl victory, and a top-25 ranking at the end of the season.

Ah, Gentle Reader, but the news is not all good.  Indeed, other than the success of teams Curmie cheers for, it’s a disaster.  The head coach of the national champion was suspended for literally half of the regular season for two separate violations; if Michigan keeps cheating like this, the SEC is going to sue for trademark violation.

But ultimately, that’s the least (well, among the least) of our worries.  The combination of the transfer portal and NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals have made the game all but unrecognizable.  The problem isn’t specifically related to football, of course: Curmie watched a basketball game the other night in which the total number of non-freshman “scholarship” players (for both teams combined) who were playing for the team where they started their collegiate career was two, and one of them had committed elsewhere before changing his mind before actually enrolling.

But if unlimited movement weren’t bad enough, the NIL business is worse, not even counting the way the system lends itself to abuse.  Let me count the ways.  First, NIL allows virtually unlimited funding for jocks, meaning that the schools with the most rabid and wealthy fans will always get the best athletes because they can and do offer the most money.  And by “always,” Curmie means both “universally” and “in perpetuity.” 

Second, it devalues those traits the sports are allegedly designed to inculcate: loyalty, perseverance, teamwork, and so on.  Third, it places an inordinant emphasis on so-called “revenue-producing sports,” football and men’s basketball.  We’ll leave aside the observation that for most universities, even—or perhaps especially—these sports are net drains on the school’s financial resources.  Women’s sports are especially overlooked in NIL.

Most importantly, of course, these deals exacerbate the already precipitous decline of the university into what what one quipster has called “a sporting franchise with a side hustle in tertiary education.”  The best high school physics student in the state won’t get as sweet a deal as someone destined to be the backup punter, especially if the latter is a handsome and well-spoken lad.  Even (or, again, perhaps especially) outstanding students with public-facing skillsets—journalists, actors, musicians, et al.—aren’t going to compete with the third-string linebacker.  This is because, not to put too fine a point on it, most universities have dropped even the pretense of caring about excellence within academic disciplines.  They’ll give their often wildly corrupt athletic programs whatever they want, and History, Chemistry, Philosophy, et al., are left to fight over the scraps.

If we want to see the clearest manifestation of the problems with college football, it’s the bowl games.  First off, there are far too many of them.  62% of FBS (i.e., Division 1) teams went to a bowl this year.  How’d that happen if you have to be at least 6-6, you ask?  Well, first off, there were a couple of 5-7 teams that got bowl invitations because there weren’t enough 6-win teams to play in the Ty-D-Bol in Bismarck in January.  (OK, Curmie made that one up, but a baker’s dozen bowl teams ended the season with losing records.)  More frequently, teams became eligible by beating up on the Little Sisters of the Poor.  Those games count towards the necessary six victories, even though no rational person think that a win over Chattanooga or UT-Martin means much to a major conference team.

And some of the games are played in ridiculous locations.  Memphis got a bowl game on their own field this year.  That’s absurd enough, but imagine playing for Georgia State and having a decent year.  Your reward: playing in a 2/3 empty outdoor stadium in Boise in late December.  Or you’re SMU, finish the regular season ranked in the top 25, and get to play in a 2/3 empty baseball stadium in Boston.  Against Boston College.  In late December.  In the morning, Eastern time.  Or, frankly, if you’re any team in about any bowl game that nobody has ever heard of, which is to say most of them.

The biggest problem in these terms, however, was the number of players who “opted out” of their bowl games.  This year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jayden Daniels of LSU, didn’t play.  Neither did last year’s Heisman winner, Caleb Williams of USC.  Ohio State lost their bowl game in part because their starting quarterback and their top receiver (the leading Heisman vote-getter other than quarterbacks) opted out.  Curmie’s beloved Jayhawks played without their best offensive lineman and their best defensive lineman. 

The list goes on and on.  The biggest story, though, was Florida State.  The Seminoles had a reasonable case (see below) that they should have been in the four-team playoff for the national title, but when they didn’t make the cut, players abandoned ship en masse.  Over 30 players, including their top three receivers, best running back, and backup quarterback (their starter was actually injured, so he has an excuse) opted out to enter either the NFL draft or the transfer portal.  Playing a bunch of second- and third-stringers, FSU was crushed by 60 points in the Orange Bowl (oops… sorry) the Capital One Orange Bowl by Georgia, who also had a lot of opt-outs, but nowhere near as many really important ones. 

Curmie is old enough to remember when playing for the team mattered, when a bowl victory, even if “only” a regular bowl game, especially a New Year’s Day game, mattered.  Hell, people two generations younger than Curmie can remember that.  Not anymore.  Particularly despicable are the players—including both Jayhawks mentioned above—who opted out of their team’s bowl game but will play in one of those inane all-star games that will happen over the next couple of weeks.  Guess what: you can get injured in one of them, too.

OK, so about Florida State’s plaint.  One of the big questions about how the playoff teams are chosen is whether the committee was looking for the four best teams or the four most deserving teams.  They managed to choose neither.  Two of the four best teams—Michigan and Alabama—made the cut.  The other two would be Georgia and Ohio State.  The former was the #1 team in the country before losing to Alabama by a single score in the SEC title game; the latter was relegated to #7 (!) because they lost by a single score on the road against the ultimate #1 team.  But they happen to be in the same division of the same conference as Michigan, so they didn’t even compete for the league title, even though they were one of the best four teams in the country.  And “the committee” places a ridiculous amount of emphasis on being a conference champion.  Except, of course, when they don’t care at all (see: FSU).

You want to make a case for Texas?  Curmie will listen.  After all, it took a remarkably stupid strategy by Auburn’s defensive coordinator to keep Bama from picking up a second loss, but picking the Longhorns over the Tide solely because they won a head-to-head game early in the season is downright silly.  Let’s play that game a little further.  Texas lost to Oklahoma, who lost to Kansas, who lost to Texas Tech, who lost to Wyoming… anybody wanna say Wyoming should have been in the playoff?  Texas beat Alabama before the latter had figured out their quarterback situation.  That single game should matter, but not much if the goal is getting the best teams.

More to the point, the committee’s logic is inconsistent.  They claim they want the best teams, but they went with TCU last year.  TCU was one of the four most deserving teams, but not one of the best.  Washington wasn’t one of the best teams this year, either, but they were at least deserving, since they went undefeated and won their conference title game.  Of course, so did Florida State, who beat a ranked Louisville team by double digits on a neutral site behind a third-string quarterback (the second-stringer would have been available for a playoff game).  But with the third-stringer, they “didn’t look like they could win the national title.”  In other words, what’s happening right now is what matters, unless we’re talking about Texas and Alabama, in which case what matters is what happened in early September. 

Curmie could go on, put he’ll spare you, Gentle Reader.

In Part Two: some solutions.