Reggie Bush gave a Playboy interview in which he talked about the need to offer college athletes the proper financial guidance and resources if they’re going to be paid.
That’s a reasonable point, of course. Here are his comments in full, and you can read the entire interview here (it’s playboy.com, obviously, so it’s probably NSFW, but then again, you’re probably not at the office right now anyway):
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.
PLAYBOY: Getting back to Celebrity Watch Party…
Those are balanced points! And, given the current world of online sports media, were destined to cause a stir among everyone desperate for content right now. (Which is everyone, and understandably so.) Sites like CBS Sports, College Football Talk, Bleacher Report, and ESPN all ran with it, both because of the current situation and because they were legitimately newsworthy comments.
Bush, though, took exception to that, though only with one specific outlet.
Dear @espn Please take this story down, I did not speak to you, I never gave you approval to write this story, this is not what I said nor the context I said it in, and your trying to use my name with this bogus headline for clickbait. Let’s not allow this to happen again… pic.twitter.com/GDHYUpPfAs
— Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) May 25, 2020
It should be noted that the ESPN post doesn’t misconstrue his comments at all, though it does break them up. He followed that up by noting that his Fox Sports contract doesn’t allow him to talk to ESPN, which, sure, okay.
My contract is with @FOXSports I can’t even talk to @espn ???????????????? but make sure yall check out The Big Noon Kick Off boys this year we coming for that #1 spot ???? pic.twitter.com/WIKDJNFgS8
— Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) May 25, 2020
This leaves us with two possibilities. One, Bush is trying to use this as an opportunity to stoke the flames between College GameDay and Big Noon Kickoff, which we saw a bit of last year, especially from the Fox side. Option two: Reggie Bush doesn’t understand how aggregation works and how it’s become a fairly standard tenet of online journalism.
Or it’s a little column A, a little column B.
[Playboy]
