There's a writer here in New York named Phil Mushnick who writes about sports media for the New York Post. He's always cranky, often amusing and occasionally correct but the lasting impression you get from his work is a feeling that he's the only person who cares about the things he's covering. Take, for example, one of his consistent bugaboos: Games that start or end at late times on the East Coast because of TV coverage. He wrote about it this week in regard to the NFL Championship games, in fact. He's right that television dictates the time sporting events start, regardless the cost of sacrificed sleep or lost exposure to younger fans, and he's right that sports leagues and networks often act in their interest as opposed to the "greater good." It's also just a fact of life that if corporate entities have a chance to make a dollar more because of a decision they will do it without thinking twice and all the screaming and yelling in the world doesn't matter because no one who can do anything is listening. I admire Mushnick's devotion to his causes (the time thing, the fact that pro wrestlers drop dead more often than regular folk, and the overreliance on crowd shots to name three) but all of his yelling and screaming takes place in a vacuum.
I kinda feel the same way about today's revelation that there are audiotapes that explicitly connect Reggie Bush with under-the-table payouts while he was at USC. Jason Cole and Charles Robinson have done fine reporting on this story for a long time, they've investigated it every which way and their editors at Yahoo! Sports should be quite pleased with the effort the two men have put forth. You know what though? No one's surprised by this and nothing's going to happen even if the allegations are proven beyond a shadow of a scintilla of a doubt.
What's the worst the NCAA will do? Retroactively make Bush ineligible, strip him of his Heisman trophy and rescind the Trojans National Championship. On the Heisman, what does Bush care about that now? They can't take away being the #2 pick in the draft nor can they take away the fact that Bush went out and won the Heisman by playing better than everyone else in the country. Similarly, the record books can say anything they want but USC won that title, like it or lump it. They did this with the Fab Five at Michigan a few years ago and it's not like anyone thinks that they didn't make back-to-back final games and change the way basketball players wear their uniforms forever. I used to have a book that had boxscores and brackets for every tournament. Starting in the 70's there would always be a note about this or that team (usually Memphis State) having their record vacated because of NCAA violations. But it's right there in that book that these teams played in the regional final or the final four so what punishment was really meted out?
I suppose they could take away a few scholarships but what does that hurt a team that recruits like USC? They will be forced to be two deep in high school All-Americans for the next three years instead of three deep, that's all. It won't stop the next Reggie Bush from getting tens of thousands of dollars from agents and marketers and it won't make the schools do a better job of policing their players to make sure these same things don't happen again.
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