Did Reggie Bush really do anything wrong? He didn’t take performance-enhancing drugs. He certainly wasn’t involved in any kind of points shaving scandal. And he definitely never sprayed his jersey with Pam in an attempt to slip tackles easier.

Long story short, he didn’t cheat.

But Bush and his alma mater, USC, are in the hot seat because of an alleged $100,000 in payments he and his family received from sports agents during his junior year, according to a yahoo.com article. The NCAA specifically states that an athlete cannot profit from his or her play or enter into contracts.

But doesn’t this seem a bit two-faced? NCAA sports are big business. How many millions of dollars did the NCAA and USC make off of the wicked-fast running back? He was on the cover of countless magazines and his highlights were in every other ESPN commercial, helping to boost both profits and ratings. But the NCAA taps players like Bush and puts their own monopolizing restrictions on them, which prohibit viable players like Bush from capitalizing off of their own success.

So the story goes that everyone was making money off of Reggie Bush, except Reggie Bush. So maybe he took some money. His parents were flown to the Trojan’s away games. They received free room and board at a suburban San Diego home. He got a new car. He was shaking hands, kissing babies, reading to the blind, ending world hunger, yet the NCAA officials wagged their fingers at him, all the while lining their pockets with every touchdown he scored.

Shouldn’t someone with talent and ability deserve to get paid? If a scholarship student finds a cure for cancer and sells it to a pharmaceutical company, should he or she lose a scholarship? Just like this scenario, Bush was using his position with the school and the NCAA to allegedly make a profit. People will say that college athletes are students first and athletes second. But how many of those students forgo graduation and opt to go professional? Ask those students which is the higher priority. I think during his final year at USC, Bush would have laid claim to being a running back before identifying himself as a C student.

Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. The NCAA needs to develop a system that allows players to set up trust funds to collect monies from endorsements and other entities while they’re in school. If Adidas or Nike or any other company wants to throw cash at 19 and 20-year olds, couldn’t there be a place in this trust which would collect once the player’s college eligibility has expired? So players can have rights to their namesake, while still remaining athletically eligible within the boundaries of the NCAA’s rules.

I’m not saying that the NCAA should pay anyone. I’d just like to see them allow those who can to get theirs. Besides, only a handful of collegiate players are marketable and desirable enough to be targeted for solicitation of services, so this scheme wouldn’t affect too many players. Agents vying for commitments from the Reggie Bushes or companies wanting to tattoo their logos on these top tier players should be free to do so.

Josh Huggett can be reached at [email protected]