Partners in Hypocrisy: USC and NCAA

In three seasons at Southern California, Reggie Bush averaged 7.3 yards per carry in rushing for 3,169 yards, caught 95 passes for 1,301 yards, and wound up in the end zone with the football 38 times. Once, he even threw a touchdown pass.

And in his first two seasons as the Trojans' star tailback, Bush's exploits helped lead the team to two national titles. In his last, 2005, Bush helped lead the Trojans back to the championship game, and had a hand in aiding their three-point loss to Vince Young's Texas Longhorns with a still-inexplicable lateral that failed miserably.



But all of that is mere minutiae, which explains why USC earlier this week sacrificed Bush's replica Heisman to the NCAA gods who last month put a four-year hex on the storied college football program – including forfeiting an entire season's wins – for giving Bush what the NCAA calls improper benefits. USC's apparent magnanimity was nothing more than paying a small cost of doing big business in the billion-dollar enterprise of college sports.

Indeed, what is truly significant about Bush's college career is what USC didn't regurgitate to the people who govern college sports – all the loot Bush helped bring to USC. In the aftermath of the NCAA's findings and sanctioning, a court of law would call what USC really got out of Bush's years ill-gotten gains.

If the cash wasn't important, USC would voluntarily return it and, in standing up to its mission as an institution of higher learning, teach its students a little something about ethics and the difference between integrity and hypocrisy. But if USC doesn't have to, and the authorities in college sports aren't making it, it won't.
After all, at the end of the game, at the end of the season, big-time college sports are like big-time pro sports. They're about making money.

It is money, and not W's and championships, that the NCAA should demand back from schools it bust like USC for violating its rules about maintaining whatever modicum of amateurism is left in college sports, specifically football and men's basketball. Dollar bills, after all, are the ultimate booty to be had in college sports, while conference crowns, postseason berths and national championships are just lures along the road to the bank.

That's the reason football and men's basketball are referred to reverentially as revenue-generating sports. That is what they're role has turned into. That is the reason they continue to exist. And with cutbacks in government funding for higher education, making money is why they've become more important to colleges and universities everywhere, including supposedly haughty private institutions like Southern California.

Bush did what he was brought to USC to do for a coach, Pete Carroll, who was being paid more than $4 million a year. He helped win championships and rake in the dough. No wonder a Carroll staff member, according to the NCAA, feathered Bush's bed. No wonder those in control at the school who should've been aware of the shenanigans were not, the NCAA suggested, or at least pretended not to be.

Consider this: In a 2004 Equity in Athletics' report from the U.S. Department of Education, USC wasn't among the top 10 college football programs in football revenue. In Bush's second season a year later, the Trojans busted into the top 10 with $29.3 million in football profit. It would go higher before Bush departed for the NFL to get paid in the millions like the coach for whom he toiled so magnificently.

The NCAA began looking into USC football in spring 2006 after Yahoo! Sports reported that Bush and his family got almost $300,000 from some start-up sports marketing agency. Against that backdrop, it would seem that the improper benefits a Trojans' assistant football coach allegedly gave Bush were truly improper, not by the NCAA's standards but by standards of fair remuneration. Yet, the assistant and Bush were made to be the fall guys for whatever the hammer was that the NCAA leveled on USC football.

But that was no hammer. If USC was hit with anything, it was more like a timpani mallet.

After all, at the end of the game, at the end of the season, big-time college sports are like big-time pro sports. They're about making money. And, as they say in the rap game, scared money don't make none. In other words, you can't be afraid to pony up in order to reap real benefits.

USC is the latest school to be exposed as not being afraid to maximize profits. Cheating as USC is accused of doing pays in college sports. The school saw more revenues. The coaches got raises. The alumni office realized fatter coffers. College football ratings continued to go up, making it as popular now as any sport in the country.

And the NCAA is fearful of stopping any school like USC from doing so because the NCAA is dependent upon the Southern Californias, too. It's a major TV draw and that means commercial dollars.

If the NCAA really wanted to end what it charged USC with doing it would mimic the NFL and NBA and other pro sports against which it competes for disposable income, television viewership and commercial sponsorship. It would add to its penalties of stripping victories and vacating titles a ladder of monetary fines.

Make a school cough up a season's worth of ticket sales, which for a program like USC's, where 80,000-plus people turn out to watch the Trojans, accounts for more than a quarter of its total football revenues, according to NCAA reports.

Make a school return its bowl check, if it got one.

Fine the CEOs and COOs of the football team, the million-dollar and multi-million-dollar salaried athletic directors and head coaches.

And admit, once and for all, what the real point of big-time college sports is and stop pretending that it is about some noble goal.