New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush is a villain. In spite of the fact that he earned hundreds of millions of dollars for the NCAA and USC with his amazing athletic ability, he has been deemed a borderline criminal. What was his crime? Wanting a piece of the fortune that both USC and the NCAA were earning from his labor.

After a four-year investigation into the USC athletic department that focused on both Bush and the recruitment of basketball star O.J. Mayo, the NCAA ruled that USC lacked institutional control in its basketball, football and tennis programs.

The USC Trojans are going to now receive one of the stiffest penalties in NCAA history. They were given four years probation, a two-year postseason ban and a loss of 30 scholarships over the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons. The football team was also asked to give up victories, starting from December 2004 through the 2005 season, including a BCS championship. The basketball team was given a one-year post-season ban and forfeited all wins during the 2007–08 season. Both programs lost scholarships and were hit with recruiting restrictions.

Bush was cited as a significant reason for the alleged violations, including the following: In October 2004 to November 2005, Bush, his mother and stepfather created a sports agency with two additional partners. After the agency was formed, the family received some benefits, including free rent.

Apparently, the family was naive enough to understand the tremendous financial value of their son's contributions and refused to be the only ones left out of the economic party.

"The general campus environment surrounding the violations troubled the committee, " the NCAA report stated. "At least at the time of the football violations, there was relatively little effective monitoring of, among others, football locker rooms and sidelines, and there existed a general post-game locker room environment that made compliance efforts difficult."

With regard to the recruitment of basketball star O.J. Mayo, the report states that someone from a sports agency provided Mayo with cash, hotel rooms, airfare, transportation, food, a TV and a cell phone, among other things. God forbid that an athlete bringing millions of dollars into an institution be provided with a free cell phone.

The dance with the NCAA has gone on long enough. The NCAA has been allowed by Congress to engage in the highly unAmerican task of violating the labor rights of its workers by making it illegal for athletes to be compensated for their labor. What most of us don't realize is that college basketball and college football are among the highest revenue-generating ventures in all of sports.

In fact, March Madness earns more ad revenue than the NBA playoffs, the World Series and the Super Bowl. USC coach Pete Caroll earned $4.4 million dollars in salary in 2009, much of this due to his recruitment of Reggie Bush. The NCAA just negotiated a 14-year, $11 billion TV rights deal just for the rights to air March Madness. I am not sure why it's a problem for Reggie's family, or the family of any revenue-generating athlete, to get a small piece of the exorbitant income that their children are bringing in to USC and the NCAA. What makes the system even more abhorrent is the fact that many of the athletes actually come from poverty.

There is nothing wrong with Reggie Bush and his family profiting from the fact that their son was a ratings bonanza for both USC and the NCAA. Bush's presence on the field led to the re-negotiation of national television contracts, massive corporate sponsorship deals and millions sold in sports apparel.

The only thing criminal about Bush's family activities is that they only received free rent and a few thousand dollars. It is only in the multibillion-dollar sweatshop known as the NCAA that such menial compensation would be deemed acceptable. If this were any other industry, Reggie and his family would have been set for life. Bush is doing well in the NFL right now, but there are thousands of other athletes who earned quite a bit of money for their colleges and were never properly compensated.

It's time for the NCAA to grow up. Bush and O.J. Mayo did nothing wrong. Similar to the days of slavery, when it was illegal for slaves to profit from their own labor, the NCAA reminds us that legality is not the same as morality. I honestly believe that while many coaches will publicly claim that the NCAA rules make sense and are built on fairness, deep down many of them know they would never accept the same deal. College athletes and their families should be paid, and we look ridiculous trying to argue otherwise.



Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the Athlete Liberation and Academic Reform Movement (ALARM). To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.