HBO plays Bush Tape.

NCAA has had all the Lake evidence for at least 3 months now, and they havent done squat. I'm starting to worry that they wont take any action.

Anyways, USC wont be implicated. There are no financial transactions involving personnel of the school or coaches, all of this stuff is between Lake and Reggie.

Worst case scenario for USC/Reggie is that he is declared ineligible, SC has to forfeit those games, and the DAC strips Reggie of the Heisman. But there wont be any probation, scholarship reductions or bowl sanctions.
 
About that Fresno State game:

If USC had a defense worth $.02, then Reggie's stats wouldn't look nearly as impressive. Of course the guy is going to get a crazy amount of all purpose yardage. When you allow a team to score 6 touchowns and you have your starting running back returning kicks, the yards will pile up.

Two horrible defenses does not make a Heisman winner. It's too bad the voters were to awestruck by their own stupidity to see that.
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Am I the only one completely stunned and impressed at how powerful ESPN is? This so far is a nonstory. ESPN hyped and pumped Reggie Bush to the Heisman and now they have what should be a huge sports scandal burried extremely deep. I applaud HBO Sports and Yahoo Sports for not giving up on this story.

I wrote PTI asking if this would be discussed today. I do not expect a reply but will post it if I receive one.
 
i was thinking the exact same thing as mike. i am shocked that i haven't seen anything on sportscenter about bush. they certainly don't have a problem reporting on other athletes with troubles.
 
i am getting used to the probability that nothing will come of this story. too many gatekeepers with too much to lose. expect this story to be buried in a shallow grave.
 
ESPN has a lot invested in Bush today. ESPN shows NFL games, they promote the hell out of Reggie, he does interviews with them, he might do those ESPN commercials (not sure). The last thing ESPN wants to do is piss off one of their signature guys. That is chicken sit. Bob Ley and "Outside The Lines" would have been all over this back in the day. ESPN has the resources to blow the roof off this thing. But they won't do it.

As for Reggie Bush's game against Fresno State, it kicked off at 9 p.m. Central time, 10 p.m. Eastern time. Hardly any of those voters saw the game, but they got the ESPN puff pieces about it the next day. Over 500 total yards. Next Gale Sayers. Yada yada yada. And based on that, Reggie got a ton of votes.

Of those 500 yards, 135 or so were on 7 kickoff returns. That's less than 20 yards per return from "the most dangerous man in the open field." What a ******** award. He was a part-time back who wasn't even a great returner (kickoffs or punts), but he had the highlights that ESPN ran to death.

VY got the last laugh. And should still be laughing b/c of all of this ****.
 
Eh, I guess I let things go and do not keep weird chips on my shoulder.

Anyway, great player and he earned it on the field.
 
I think that the late start time for the Fresno game worked to Bush's advantage as it was the only football on at the time. All of the CFB junkies were riveted to the tube at 1:30 a.m. b/c of the drama of watching Fresno push the greatest team to draw breath to an inch of their last breath. Bush did have a heroic performance against a WAC defense, though.

At some point ESPN will have to cover this story. This isn't 1993, thanks to the interwebs everybody knows about this story and ESPN couldn't keep it quiet.
 
The reason the NCAA investigation might be taking so long is that they've discovered widespread problems with the program, not just Reggie's involvement. If that's the case this could take a while to investigate thoroughly. Maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if this blew up big time. Apparently agents are allowed virtually unlimited access to the USC lockerroom and practice field. That sounds to me like a recipe for impending disaster.
 
Has ESPN given this story any attention or made any indication that it is covering it? I don't know. I couldn't tell you the last time I actually watched Sportscenter.
 
I feel like Harry Caray, "I just can't figure it out" as to why ESPN would hide this story about Bush. They ran with the story when LeBron got a H2 from his mom in high school, something that was against amateur rules. They knew LeBron would be a star for years to come but still ran with the story.

I compare the Bush story to the way ESPN keeps drumming about how Albert Pujols has never taken any illegal substance and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous. Every other baseball players can be suspected about but not Pujols. I think it is because he will remain a huge figure in baseball for years to come and he is media friendly...much like Bush. If ESPN thought Bush would fade away and not be a great player like Troy Smith, this story would be huge! I guess, like Jive suggested, they are protecting their vested interest and want to stay in good standing with Bush for promotional purposes.

The conspiracy-theorist in me says that ESPN is dirty as well. During the 2005 season I kept asking, does Bush have a press agent? Well it turns out that he did and was probably working with ESPN in hyping up the client. Of course, that is a conspiracy.
 
I don't like conspiracy theories either. But it's hard not to notice that ESPN never put the information on their front page to begin with. They didn't put the release of the book on their front page. And they haven't put the HBO tape play on their front page.

But they did put Bush's denial and accusations of extortion on the front page.
 
After reading about this last night, I dreamed that USC got the death penalty. I don't think that's at all likely, but it sure would be fun to see.
 
There is a lot of piling on ESPN, and we don't need to re-live their pre-Rose Bowl performance. But NONE of the major national sports news outlets - including Yahoo! - have given coverage to this HBO piece in the last couple days. The closest thing is a blurb in USA Today about Lake agreeing to a deposition next month.

I didn't catch the HBO show, but I suspect ESPN et al don't consider a taped made-for-TV piece to be cause for rushing the story back to the front pages. The real test will come when someone from the NCAA or USC goes on record about this, or when Lake is deposed on Feb. 13.

See this link for the very brief list of mentions of "Bush" and "HBO" in the media in recent days.
 
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