Reggie Bush Gives Up One of the Most Honorable Trophies in All of Sports

Should Reggie Bush have to give up his Heisman Trophy and the honorable title that comes with it?

Last Tuesday, Bush, after months of speculation by NCAA, announced that he would be relinquishing his title as the 2005 Heisman award winner. The fiasco started when NCAA started suspecting that Bush, ranked No. 2 by the New Orleans Saints, and his family had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from two California marketing agencies. After that, Pacific-10 and NCAA started investigating the USC football program, who has received allegations of wrong-doing in the past.

Distribution of the Heisman Memorial Trophy began in 1935 when the Heisman Trophy Trust of New York City awarded "an individual who deserves designation as the most outstanding college football player in the United States." While the award shows the one player who has excelled in collegiate football, it has also become the most prestigious award among all collegiate athletes.

Should the Heisman Trophy now be given to Vince Young, Texas quarter-back and runner up to Reggie Bush in 2005, or should the sports community still recognize Bush as the best collegiate football player regardless of his lack of trophy?

If Bush hadn't been a qualifier in 2005 who knows how the votes would have been distributed so there is no way to know for sure that Young would still have been an apparent favorite. In addition to that, merely based on Bush's performance, he deserved the honorable award so by giving the trophy to a new person, it is almost as though we are saying, "Now that we know what you did, it cancels out your talent and we don't consider you the best anymore." It was right for him to give up the trophy being that he was involved in activities that were against NCAA rules but the title of the Heisman Trophy winner should not be given to a new person for a season that happened five years ago.
Let me know what you think!