It’s been less than a day since Reggie Bush stunned the college football world by announcing his decision to “voluntarily” forfeit the 2005 Heisman trophy.
In the the 20 hours or so that have passed, the Heisman Trust has said little outside of a non-statement statement -- “The Heisman Trophy Trust will issue a statement in due course. Until that time we will have no further comment.” -- as to what their next step will be.
Will they simply vacate the award? Hand it to runner-up Vince Young? Conduct a re-vote?
Of course, the sound of silence coming from the trust has done nothing but add further fuel to the speculative fire, with most of the noise seeming to come down on the side of handing the stiff-armed hardware to the former Texas Longhorns and current Tennessee Titans quarterback.
Such a move, however, would be misguided at best and, at its worst, an attempt to reshape and twist history into something that it wasn’t.
If you think back to the 2005 regular season, there’s little doubt outside of the great state of Texas that the former USC running back was the best player in college football for those dozen or so games. He was awe-inspiring on that hundred yards of grass every fall Saturday, averaging nearly nine yards a carry and leading the nation in all purpose yards. While some views are skewed -- with the aid of postseason hindsight -- by Young’s virtuoso performance in his Longhorns title game win over Bush’s Trojans, there was little doubt then as there should be now that Bush was the seminal player of that season.
The voters en masse seemed to agree as well, overwhelmingly handing the Heisman to Bush in December of that year. Bush received a staggering 784 of the 892 first-place votes. Vince Young, for all of the support he’s receiving now, had over 700 fewer first-place votes (79) than the winner back in 2005.
And that’s the thing. That ’05 Heisman race wasn’t even a race as far as the voters were concerned; why should it then be a consideration now? Bush was clearly, hands-down the best player in the country in the eyes of the people that matter the most -- the voters. 784 first-place votes to 79? Even five years after the fact, those numbers still ring loud and clear.
Certainly, Bush does not deserve to keep his Heisman. He was found to have accepted illegal benefits by the NCAA and was declared retroactively ineligible for the 2005 season. According to the Heisman Trust’s own bylaws, a student-athlete must be in good standing in order to be eligible for the award; Bush, even as it’s nearly five years after the fact, wasn’t in good standing and is thus ineligible to retain the trophy.
However, just because Bush doesn’t deserve to keep his Heisman doesn’t mean it should automatically fall down the line and into Young’s lap.
No, the right thing to do would be to vacate the award for that year, and allow it to stand as a symbol that, regardless of how many electrifying things a player may do on the football field for his football team, there’s a certain level of responsibility and accountability that needs to be adhered to as well.
Reggie Bush (finally) did the right thing by stripping himself of the Heisman. It’s time for the trust charged with handing out the annual award to officially respond in kind and vacate the thing.