Reggie Bush and Lilit Avagyan’s wedding After dating for a few years, Lilit and Reggie tied the knot in July 2014. The ceremony, in which the dancer officially became Lilit Avagyan Bush, was held in at The Grand Del Mar in San Diego. Reggie Bush has had a nice NFL career. Maybe not the one people were expecting when he was being hailed as the next Gale Sayers coming out of USC, but he's done well. But then there's 2016.

As of early 2006, the NCAA still had plenty of fans and media brainwashed about the sanctity of a system that exploits athletes. In the 14 years since then, plenty of people have embraced the notion that it’s flat-out wrong to take advantage of the skills and abilities of young football players, giving them something far less than fair value in return for their efforts and sacrifices.

In the days when hackneyed notions of amateurism still mattered, USC running back Reggie Bush found himself in the midst of a controversy based on his parents receiving free rent from a group that hoped to represent Bush. The scandal caused the Texans not to take Bush with the first pick in the 2006 draft (the Saints pounced at No. 2 that year), and it resulted in the NCAA eventually stripping USC of a national title and taking back a Heisman Trophy that Bush had rightfully earned.

Bush recently addressed the award the NCAA took from him during an appearance on Cold As Balls from Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud.

“I 1,000 percent want my damn Heisman Trophy back,” Bush told Hart. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want it back. But to me the silver lining is, I believe what happened with me had to happen so we could get here in 2020.”

Bush should get his Heisman back. He never should have had to give it up. “Rules are rules” nonsense has allowed the NCAA to maintain an inherently corrupt system. Even though that inherently corrupt system has yet to show significant signs of making the dramatic changes that become more overdue with each passing day, the rest of the world now views issues of amateurism and revenue generation far differently than ever before.

Hopefully, more and more changes will come for the NCAA. Hopefully, players eventually will get properly compensated for the massive amounts of money they generate.

Until then, our message to all college athletes is this: Get what you can, when you can, while you can. It’s only “wrong” in the eyes of those who would deny you what you deserve.

The world of college football is changing. Some would argue it’s changing for the better, while others may take the opposite view. Money, name, image, and likeness are all being urgently discussed, and the power of recruits has never been more tilted toward the players than it is right now. Players from yesteryear couldn’t even imagine standing up to their coach, demanding change in his behavior, and getting that change. Players in the modern era have the ability to effect this sort of change and they’re not afraid to do so.

One of the biggest changes for the USC football team is the ability to now reference and use former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush as a recruiting tool. Given the end of his 10-year disassociation period with USC, Bush is now able to recruit and act as a representative of the school. This comes at a time when USC has had some trouble recruiting and lacks big-name players recruiting on behalf of the university. In order to see how fans and writers are reacting to the news, Trojans Wire reached out to several contacts to talk about Bush.

First up is Trojans Wire editor Matt Zemek:

“Reggie Bush coming back to USC — in light of everything happening within the NCAA, but also in American society — reveals very nakedly how much of a nothingburger the actual violations were 10 years ago. We still haven’t arrived at the completion of a Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) system in college sports — we’re closer to it, but implementation hasn’t yet become official.

“The NCAA, like society, has been so slow to evolve, and this glacial pace of evolution is part of the larger story in which young black men aren’t treated the way elite, affluent white people are. This IS systemic racism. This IS a reflection of some lives and some groups of people being valued more than others by our government, by our legal system, and by institutions such as the NCAA. I hope more and more people can see this. Accordingly, I hope we can see that young athletes cashing in on immense talent isn’t a moral scandal at all. Exploitation of athletes — within the realm of collegiate athletics — is a genuine scandal. In the larger society, unequal treatment of blacks — whether at the hands of a policeman or an affluent white woman such as Amy Cooper — is a far bigger scandal than many of us have been willing to admit.

“Maybe now Americans — especially affluent whites, and particularly affluent white women — can see how oppressive our structures are. Reggie Bush was released not from prison, but from a stupid penalty which did no one any good. How many other situations are there in which a penalty isn’t referring to a comparatively trivial matter such as “disassociation from a school,” but to imprisonment for voting incorrectly, or smoking a joint, or using a counterfeit $20 bill, as George Floyd was suspected to have done before he was killed? Reggie Bush being back at USC 10 years after the NCAA’s draconian penalties reminds us that our institutions don’t play fairly and don’t have the slightest shred of consistency or credibility in how they punish people or groups in different sets of circumstances.”

Trojans Wire also reached out to USC megabooster Roy Nwasseri to get his thoughts on Bush’s return to the Trojans:

“My whole life as a USC football fan before Reggie mostly consisted of disappointment and hearing about the glory days, which I couldn’t relate to and never thought would return. Everything changed when Reggie was at USC. Reggie doesn’t get all the credit because there were a lot of contributors, but without him there is no return to glory. Since Reggie left it has once again been mostly disappointment, but at least now I can look back fondly on the glory days that I got to experience. Reggie was a big part of an entire generation of USC fans’ best memories, and nothing that happened off the field taints that.

“The NCAA levied heavy-handed sanctions on USC because they wanted to cripple us, but I have no idea what the point of forcing USC to disassociate from Reggie was. That never made sense to me, so it is awesome to have one of the true all-time greats back in the Trojan family where he belongs. And I can’t wait to see him lead the team out of the tunnel and onto the field, that will be another unforgettable Reggie moment. Now it’s time to bring his Heisman Trophy back too!”

Former USC Trojans defensive back Tony Burnett had this to say about Bush’s return to the Trojans:

“Reggie coming back means order can truly be restored. It’s kind of hard to celebrate USC football without celebrating Reggie Bush. If you ask someone to name five USC players from any era I will guarantee you everyone will name Reggie Bush. While I get the disassociation, in my opinion it’s all semantics. You can’t just wish away everything Reggie did at USC. We all saw it, it all happened. But I’m just glad the faking is over because he’s done way too much for the program to be kept distant. I’ve seen plenty of Trojan greats around and run out with the Trojans, but never Reggie? That’s just not right. He should lead the team out the first game of the year and I’m sure the Coliseum will explode.”

Reggie Bush Interviews

It’s pretty clear that Bush evokes some passionate responses from fans, boosters, writers, and former players. What you think of Reggie Bush largely will depend on how you view his actions in relation to the damage it did to USC. Personally, I always held it against Reggie that he didn’t bother to speak up or help USC when it faced the onslaught. He was more concerned about his professional career — and his personal relationship with Kim Kardashian — than on doing the right thing at the time. Of course, now that his NFL career is over and he’s not being followed around because he’s dating a Kardashian, suddenly he has time for USC.

Reggie Bush Stats

Bush has a long way to go before he earns my forgiveness. I don’t care that every athlete was doing it or that the rules were ridiculous. They were ridiculous, he shouldn’t have been punished, but he was caught. At a certain point, you have to own that. You have to understand that your actions led to a number of students not being able to play in important games or participate in legendary moments. This is the start of a repaired relationship, but it’s just that; it’s the start. There is still a ways to go before everything is put in the past.