The college football landscape may change in the near future with players allowed to profit off their likeness. As the idea continues to gain support, there are still warnings from some high-profile figures about how it could go wrong.
Take Reggie Bush, who starred for USC before moving onto the NFL. Bush fears that being paid early in a college career could “destroy” some athletes.
“Guidance is the one thing that young athletes coming through the college system miss on so much,” Bush told Ryan Gajewski of Playboy. “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.”
Bush would have been a very wealthy man had he been allowed to profit off himself at the height of his USC stardom. Some would probably say that he did that anyway, but it would have been very lucrative had he been able to do it legally. But Bush makes a worthwhile point about it not immediately fixing problems. It’s easy to make mistakes with money, as Bush points out here. It will be something worth remembering the more the rules are expanded.
