Give Reggie Bush His Heisman Back

Today marks the end of Reggie Bush's 10-year, NCAA-mandated dissociation from USC, meaning he can officially be part of the USC football program again. I guess it doesn't mean too terribly much other than the fact that USC can acknowledge it had one of the great — albeit overrated — running backs in the history of college football and honor him at games and things like that, but it's a good thing for college football.

And since that punishment has run its course, the Downtown Athletic Club needs to give Bush his Heisman Trophy back.

Bush forfeited his Heisman in 2010 after the NCAA levied the aforementioned punishments against Bush and USC. The NCAA doesn't actually have anything to do with the Heisman, so there's nothing it can do about it. It would have to be returned by the Heisman Trust and Downtown Athletic Club.

But this is all so ridiculous. I would guarantee more than 50 percent of Heisman winners since, say, 1990 have received some sort of payment to attend whatever school they won the award for. Bush should have never voluntarily given it up and made them come and take it — maybe they would have anyway, but who knows — because now his NCAA punishment is over, but he's left without the most prestigious award in college football.

And in an era where we're on the doorstep of letting collegiate athletes profit from their own names, it looks pretty bad on everyone involved to have one of the most recognizable players of this century stripped of his Heisman Trophy because his family got a little bit of money. Not to mention how absurd these ex post facto removals are, anyway. We all know Louisville won the 2013 NCAA Tournament and we all know Bush won the 2005 Heisman. Putting an asterisk in the history books doesn't do a damn thing.

Just let the guy have his trophy.