LOS ANGELES – He strolled onto the terrace high above his former home at the Coliseum, wearing sunglasses and a vindicated smile, lugging in his 2005 Heisman Trophy by the metallic leg of its figurine like a boxer who’d just won a belt in a prizefight.
“How we doin’, how we doin’, how we doin,’” Reggie Bush affirmed as he walked past rows of media Wednesday morning, the former USC legend setting the trophy on a podium and facing its gold placard forward for the world to see.
The Heisman Memorial Trophy is presented by Heisman Trophy Trust to REGGIE BUSH. For the second time, really.
“I know there have been millions of doubters out there,” Bush said, in response to a question Thursday on what he still wanted to prove about his reputation. “And hopefully, now those people can see what we’ve been saying all along is true.”
On Wednesday, the Heisman Trust had announced it was returning Bush’s 2005 Heisman, circumventing over a decade of battles between Bush and the NCAA over the investigation that stripped the former star running back of his trophy and USC of their 2004 national title. And thus on Thursday morning – exactly eight months after Bush and his lawyers stood at the same spot above the Coliseum, announcing a defamation suit against the NCAA in a push to have his Heisman returned – Bush’s team held a press conference Thursday morning that was more a victory lap than a continued call to action.
The trophy watched, sitting calmly on that podium next to Bush and his lawyers as they lobbed verbal grenade after grenade at the NCAA. And this was about the trophy, sure, because it’s all been about the trophy – the public outcries from Bush, the lawsuit, the billboards enacted by one-time major USC donor Brian Kennedy last year telling the NCAA to “Give Reggie Bush Back His Heisman!”
Thursday, though, was about more than that Heisman. This was about image rehabilitation, with a 45-pound hunk of bronze nearby to add credence to Bush’s words.
“The trophy, I guess, was the icing on the cake, of being taken away,” Bush told media. “But being labeled a cheater was far worse. Because I’ve never cheated. And there is no proof of that.”
There is proof, of something. Back in 2010, when Bush’s Heisman was originally stripped, the NCAA found he’d accepted payments from agent Lloyd Lake and “improper benefits” while playing at USC. But that original NCAA investigation was called into question, and Lake’s credibility tested, through an investigation and subsequent legal action from former USC assistant coach Todd McNair. And on Thursday, Ben Crump – a nationally recognized civil rights lawyer – took every opportunity to emphasize the fallibility of the NCAA’s original investigation.
“This is a district court saying this!” Crump said, referencing a Superior Court of California ruling in the McNair case that called the NCAA’s original interview of Lake “unprofessional.” “This ain’t Ben Crump … this is a district court saying this.”
And Bush’s lawyers leveraged the trophy’s simple presence on Thursday, repeatedly criticizing the NCAA, with Crump saying the decision was a “clarion call to the NCAA to do the right thing.” Lawyer Levi McCathern told the Southern California News Group that there had been no input from the NCAA on the Heisman Trust’s decision Wednesday to reverse course, after originally making clear they’d stick to NCAA direction regarding Bush.
“The Heisman Trust had listened to what I was saying, what Reggie was saying, and really pushed for us,” McCathern said.
The NCAA did not, and has naturally stood firm against Bush, filing a motion to dismiss his defamation suit in December after his lawyers pounced on a July 2021 statement seeming to associate Bush with the phrase “pay-for-play.” A hearing on the NCAA’s motion to dismiss is scheduled for Monday in the Marion Superior Court in Indiana. So Crump and McCathern, quite clearly, attempted to use Thursday’s public victory to build momentum.
“Google ‘Accountability and responsibility and NCAA,’ and there aren’t any articles,” McCathern said at the presser. “Now, that’s not true. Because there is no accountability, and there is no responsibility.”
“They celebrate what they do on the field,” Crump told the Southern California News Group, speaking on the NCAA’s treatment of minority athletes, “but they despise their communities and their culture. And yeah, we have to say, ‘No, you can’t treat us like second-class citizens.’”
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And the defamation suit will continue: Bush was “ready to have his day in court,” Crump said. What, exactly, Bush and his team are searching for is more ambiguous. They’re seeking punitive damages, certainly, as established by their original complaint. But the “next step,” Bush also emphasized to media after the presser Thursday, was to reclaim USC’s vacated records from his playing days, a push that will be a tall task in his current litigation.
Thursday, though, was more a chance than anything else for Bush to deliver an extended told-you-so, the one-time showstopper soaking in the moment with his wife Lilit, mother Denise Griffin, and children watching proudly as he spoke. The other day, as Bush described, his son had asked him when he was getting his Heisman Trophy back.
Soon, Bush responded.
You said that two years ago, his son said.
“There was never a doubt in my mind,” Bush said, “that it would come.”