Jason Cole

USC running back Reggie Bush entered what should be one of the most exciting weeks of his life with a giant headache.

He’s about to be involved in one ugly investigation about his family’s finances after both Yahoo!.com and The Miami Herald published stories Sunday. Specifically, the question about whether his family received a house from a fledgling agent is going to be a hotly examined topic by the NCAA and the media.

In short, Bush’s family was allowed to live in a house purchased by a man hoping to become Bush’s marketing agent. Under NCAA rules, that could make Bush ineligible for the 2005 season and USC could be facing some stiff penalties in the future.

But by Saturday, when Houston tips off the annual NFL draft, this investigation won’t mean a thing in terms of where Bush gets drafted. In a league where Lawrence Phillips went No. 6 overall 1996 after dragging his college girlfriend down a set of stairs by her hair, Bush’s white collar crime is pretty meaningless.

Or, to put it in a different perspective, when Houston general manager Charley Casserly was contacted Sunday night and the story was explained to him, he didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Casserly said with little concern. “I haven’t talked to Reggie about it, so I don’t want to comment on it.”

About the only real concern as far as Bush and the story goes is that it’s going to be an obvious distraction as the investigation unfolds. Furthermore, Bush is going to have to deal with lots of questions from the media along the way as they probe a lot of other odd dealings that Bush has had over the past year.

But if you think any NFL team cares about that more than about Bush’s talent, that’s absurd.

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Bush is still going to be the No. 1 overall pick, barring some odd change of heart by Houston, which opened contract talks with his agent this week. Even then, he won’t drift outside the top four picks. At worst, he has lost a little leverage, but even that could be overstatement.

The real concern about Bush is that he may have tarnished his once-pristine image for a little while. Bush might lose a marketing deal or two, but he will still have plenty of opportunity.

Steinberg gets snooped
Speaking of needing some better news, agent Leigh Steinberg took two hard hits when he lost offensive tackle Winston Justice and quarterback Matt Leinart, who were both projected to go in the top 10 picks of the draft.

“I got Snoop Dogged and CAA’ed,” Steinberg said wearily last week. He was referring to how rapper Snoop Dogg recently helped agent Gary Uberstine get Justice. Earlier this year, Snoop Dogg formed a partnership with Uberstine. Likewise, Steinberg believes the folks at Creative Artists Agency undercut him with Leinart.

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“It’s really hard to guide someone through the process when every five minutes somebody else is in his ear telling him I’m not doing things in his best interests and that I’m just doing things for myself,” said Steinberg, who was hoping to parlay some success with Justice and Leinart into revitalizing his agency.

Leinart has since signed with agent Tom Condon, who now works under the CAA umbrella now. CAA was going to handle Leinart’s marketing from the start. Therein lies a big problem.

Leinart simply has too many people in his ear right now. Steinberg knew that, but hoped that his guidance would eventually help Leinart understand that and that the entourage would get trimmed later.

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Instead, Leinart, who seems to have more friends in the entertainment business than in football, cut Steinberg out of the picture. This is not to say that Condon won’t do a fine job of negotiating a deal for Leinart, but Leinart needs to understand that Steinberg knew the deal.

In essence, you have to wonder what’s going to happen if Condon ever has to tell Leinart to take the game more seriously? Is Leinart going to listen? Or is he going to listen to the other guys at CAA who convinced him that Steinberg wasn’t good enough?

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