During a recent interview with Ryan Gajewski of Playboy, Reggie Bush said paying college athletes is “going to destroy some people if their foundation is not in the right place.” ESPN ran a story of their own, headlining this quote because of the obvious irony where Bush and his family reportedly received payments of up to $300,000 while he was a star running back for USC 15 years ago.
As the story quickly gained traction, Bush took to Twitter requesting ESPN remove the article because they did not conduct the interview. ESPN did not take credit for the interview and they did cite Playboy as the source for Bush’s quote.
Here is the full question and answer that triggered Bush to comment on the NCAA allowing college athletes to profit off their popularity.
PLAYBOY: Do you ever think about trying your hand at coaching?
REGGIE: Nope, no coaching for me. Maybe I’d take a front-office position, but I’m not trying to go back and coach. I would like to help people, but I’d rather just pop in for guidance. Guidance is the one thing that young athletes coming through the college system miss on so much. I missed on it. They’re about to start paying college athletes. This is something that has never been experienced before, and it’s going to destroy some people if their foundation is not in the right place.
The one thing I wish I had early in my career is proper financial knowledge. I hired good agents, and I hired a good team. But I allowed that good team to make decisions for me. I’m not saying I’m going bankrupt, but if I had the proper knowledge back then, some things would be different. People just assume, “Well, you got all this money, so you’re good.” It’s actually the opposite. The more money you have, the more danger you’re in. Because now you’re a freaking open target for a lot of people. It’s a nasty world out there, and it’s about to get nastier. You’re going to really start to see the true colors of a lot of people, and a lot of businesses too. You’re going to see people doing some crazy stuff to make money, because our market is crashing
When ESPN found the quote from Bush commenting on college athletes being paid, they recognized the potential for it to gain attention and aggregated it into their own story, which triggered this response.
It was an odd request from the former NFL running back and current FOX college football analyst because ESPN did nothing wrong in using the quote. If building your own story off someone else’s public quote was not an accepted form of journalism than I would have a much harder time filling my daily quota of stories for BSM. ESPN did not take down the story, but did later add Bush’s frustration.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
