Ugh. This gets the Steve Buscemi foot-in-the-woodchipper GIF from “Fargo,” because that’s what stories like this make me want to do: dive into one and end it all.
The Heisman Trust announced today the formal “reinstatement” of the 2005 Heisman Trophy to former USC college football star Reggie Bush 14 years after he had been stripped of it. That 2010 decision was made when the NCAA sanctioned USC for multiple rules violations, which included Bush receiving “improper benefits,” as ESPN coyly puts it, during his Trojans career from 2003 to 2005.
USC and Bush cheated, you see. They cheated, and nothing has changed regarding their guilt. They broke the rules. But because the NCAA, the Heisman Trust, football, American sports organizations generally and the American public that supports them all have the approximate ethical literacy of dung beetles, Reggie’s cheating doesn’t count.
In addition to returning the Heisman Trophy to Bush and and giving a replica to USC, Bush will again be invited to all future Heisman Trophy ceremonies. The logic, if you can call it that, explaining this brain-dead decision, was stated by the president of The Heisman Trophy Trust this way: “We are thrilled to welcome Reggie Bush back to the Heisman family in recognition of his collegiate accomplishments. We considered the enormous changes in college athletics over the last several years in deciding that now is the right time to reinstate the trophy for Reggie. We are so happy to welcome him back.”
Morons. Just as ex post facto laws criminalizing conduct after the fact are unconstitutional, ex post facto rules do not, can not, and must not make unethical conduct in the past retroactively ethical. Bush and USC knew the rules in effect in 2005 and deliberately broke them for material gain. That’s cheating. That’s wrong. That mandated stripping the school of its titles and wins, and Bush of his honors, permanently
“Personally, I’m thrilled to reunite with my fellow Heisman winners and be a part of the storied legacy of the Heisman Trophy, and I’m honored to return to the Heisman family,” Bush said in a statement to ESPN. “I also look forward to working together with the Heisman Trust to advance the values and mission of the organization.” What are those values, I wonder, as indicated by this decision? Cheating is OK if eventually the rules are changed?
Elsewhere in its fatuous statement, the Trust cited “fundamental changes in college athletics” in which rules have allowed “student athlete compensation” to become “an accepted practice and appears here to stay.” Yecchh. A better example of the “Everybody does it” rationalization would be hard to find.
When the (unethical) rules allowing athletes to be compensated for their name, image and likeness were enacted in 2021, Bush lobbied for his trophy to be returned. Supporting him was former slime-ball Texas A&M star Johnny Manziel. The serial King’s Pass beneficiary vowed to skip the Heisman Trophy ceremony until Bush’s trophy was returned. I would have thought that would have ensured that Bush never got his trophy back.
By no mental gymnastics can Bush’s surreptitious acceptance of forbidden cash and gifts to play amateur football be called anything but a deliberate violation of rules for his own benefit. The NCAA changing the rules he violated doesn’t alter his culpability, the appropriateness of his punishment, or what his violation reveals about his character. What the episode does reveal is that I am wasting my time, energy and passion on a society, its institutions and its public that overwhelmingly lack basic ethics alarms. They just don’t get it.
Hang on, Steve! I’m coming!
Added: I’ve been trying to think of parallel examples. Curmie gives one below in the comments. Another would be admitting Barry Bonds to baseball’s Hall of Fame if, in some future hellscape, MLB allows all players to use performance enhancing drugs. That would not make Bonds any less of a cheater. In a non-sports setting, imagine a student expelled from a college for cheating, after being caught sneaking a textbook crib sheet into an exam. If the school later goes to an all-open book format, should he be reinstated?
Ethics Alarms 
The NCAA has long since lost all credibility: at the very least by the time of the North Carolina phony classes case a decade ago. One wonders how much pressure they applied to the Heisman Foundation. What’s particularly appalling here is that all of the ESPN talking heads seem to think this is a great idea. ”Long overdue,” quoth idiot blowhard Stephen A. Smith.
I await the reinstatement of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France victories. At least in that case, the “everybody does it” defense was indeed very close to being factually true.
Your comment just inspired me to add a bit to the post….
I guess I don’t pay as much attention to college sports as most people. It is most likely that I simply could not care less about college sports, or most sports for that matter (curling, though, is a favorite of mine; and, no, bowling is NOT a sport!).
I find the NCAA rules idiotic, arcane, and nonsensical – LeBron James, a high school superstar – got himself in a pickle for accepting a Michael Jordan jersey or shoes (I can’t remember which but I know it was some sports apparel) with a $700 value, but his mom was able to accept a $65,000 Cadillac from a potential scout without consequence. How that makes any sense is beyond me.
As for the new rules for student athletes, why isn’t scholarship money considered some kind of compensation for athletes playing college sports? (Maybe it does – I could be wrong). I am not sure why a Reggie Bush or Johnnie Football should not be able to market their likeness and images and get paid for them. Why should Texas A&M or UT be able to prohibit or limit college athletes from the off-campus sale of their merchandise? If a sports fan wants to pay money for a meet and greet and an autograph, the athlete should be able to do that. Is it that the school isn’t benefiting from the athlete’s non-field-of-play activities? But, A&M has a TV contract and makes tons (tonnes?) of cash off of it. Hell, they were able to redo the A&M stadium, adding more seats to accommodate over 102,000 spectators. You read that right – over 102,000 spectators fit in the A&M stadium! The crazy thing is that the stadium is packed for every game, no matter how frickin’ hot it is (oh, it’s hot: I almost killed my parents-in-law when I took them to an A&M v. Some Other School game in September) or how lousy the team is. In Texas, Johnnie Football was all over TV when he was the hottest commodity in college sports, usually engaging in plays that would get most players benched – certainly not applauded for taking that “risky” throw to a receiver in the middle of 10 defensive players.
jvb
Next up is Shoeless Joe Jackson, right?
The NCAA has, as Curmie said., long since lost all credibility. The Supremes recognized this in their 9-0 2021 holding that prohibiting education-related benefits to college athletes was unconstitutional. Although the holding was very narrow, there were indications from some Justices that the NCAA “business model” (as Justice Kavanaugh put it) would be illegal for any other organization. The NCAA recognized the (at least) implied threat to their model and changed the rules. So, a not entirely hypothetical question (or at least a logical hypothetical), if the NCAA rules were unconstitutional, should Bush continue to be punished for violating an unconstitutional rule? [Yes, I recognize the actual holding was more narrow. Yes, I recognize that the rule existed, he knew it existed, and he violated it. Clearly unethical but … is violating an unethical rule unethical? Jack, you and other commenters probably would say “yes” …. I don’t think it is as clear as that].
And yes, I do agree that the actions of Bush and USC were unethical, but that does not “necessarily” make NCAA an ethics dunce for reinstating Bush’s Heisman after NCAA digested what Justices said about NCAA’s own illegal/unethical behavior in enacting the rule in the first place. Now, if we address NCAA action as ethical, the only logical thing for them to do is sift back through all the records of college athletes who were disqualified or their universities sanctioned for similar behavior. 🤪
Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals because he played semi-pro ball for 2 years to support himself (in school, I believe). His medals were reinstated, but not because pro athletes can now compete in the Olympics. They were reinstated because it was discovered that lots of people did this at the time and it wasn’t considered a rules violation. There was a rule that you couldn’t be a pro athlete, but people who were paid to play in these semi-pro leagues for a few years and weren’t currently playing weren’t considered to violate the rule, except Thorpe. That is selective interpretation and selective enforcement. It is like when the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Russian dossier to discredit Trump and listed it as legal fees and her campaign got a minor fine for it. Trump used his own money to pay off a nuisance and it is tried as a felony. Bush’s case isn’t like this.
Now, I have seen a lot of NCAA violations in my time. I have seen freshman football players move into an apartment with a 10-year old Cavalier and lawn furniture and a week later they are driving a Porsche and have a big screen TV the size of a wall. So, I have seen lots of people cheat the system. The difference is, the people cheating then were considered cheaters. Everyone doing what Bush was doing was considered a cheater. He knew he was breaking the rules when he did it.
A hypothetical to consider as a counterpoint:
What if SCOTUS had not simply vacated Roe v Wade, but instead made it a criminal act to have an abortion? What if SCOTUS agreed upon a 1-year prison sentence and a $5k fine for a woman having an abortion.
Would we retroactively imprison and fine all women who received abortion services?
If we don’t punish someone for a legal act now made illegal, why would we reward someone for an illegal act now considered otherwise?
Only the ATF is allowed to do that.
Does not seem like a real counterpoint. I think you would probably agree that retroactive punishment is unethical and perhaps unconstitutional; whereas retroactive forgiveness of crimes is (generally speaking) neither unethical, illegal, or unconstitutional. The hypothetical presents a false counterpoint.
(Just to underscore, I did not conclude that NCAA action was not unethical, only that there is enough valid argument to indicate that NCAA — right or wrong in their decision — really should not be labeled an “ethics dunce” for this one. )
But Michael, this is retroactive forgiveness of cheating as if it wasn’t cheating because it wouldn’t be now. The Barry Bonds comparison is apt, I think.
Apt, yes. Probative, yes. Decisive, no. Is it unethical for the President (or Congress) to forgive acts that were crimes when committed? Dilemma. Ethical approach is probably to forgive. That does not make the action of the individual any less unethical (or render it ethical) but the forgiver is not, to my mind, an ethics dunce. [Yes, NCAA is an ethics dunce for many reasons, just not this one {
But Michael, they didn’t pardon him, they declared that what he did—-cheating— was OK, because now it’s allowed. That’s very different. It isn’t OK. What he did is now permitted, but cheating is still dishonest…especially in sports, hence the term “sportsmanship.”
So, in your construction, the people being released from prison because marijuana is no longer treated as a crime worthy of incarceration renders the “liberator” unethical? Possession and use of marijuana is still a federal crime, so perhaps both the liberator and those who accept liberation are unethical?
Pardons aren’t exonerations, they are acts of grace and mercy. Those “liberations” can ethically represent a judgment that the sentence was too long or excessive. You can’t compare not having a trophy and an honor for some years as equivalent to prison: if he ends up with the trophy, there is literally no punishment at all. Those who have served time for pot possession have still been punished, and the pardon doesn’t mean, “You did nothing wrong.” Of course they did: they broke the law.
But in many states, marijuana offenders are released and their records expunged. Times change, so let’s forget that it was wrong when it was done. Not really that different, Jack, in many states now.
Michael,
Yeah, I probably didn’t make a very convincing point, but what Bush and USC did twenty years ago was illegal. Rewarding Reggie with a prize now that had been rescinded then…well, that’s effectively saying “You didn’t do anything wrong in 2005.” That’s a lie, because he did.
Our society is getting things exactly backwards. We punish people – like our slave-owner Founders and their contemporaries – for past deeds that, while immoral and unethical, were legal. Simultaneously, we reward people – like Reggie Bush – who broke actual, punishable NCAA rules.
👍