FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Every now and again, some football wonk will assemble a list of the greatest busts in the history of the NFL, a determination generally based on three criteria: a) high placement in the draft; b) loud hype going into the draft; c) a pro career that stinks worse than Rip Torn at the bank.
It’s always fun to see the names that round out the Top 10 or Top 20 or however deep the list goes. But almost invariably, in some form or other, there are three names that have created something of a security council of sewage, permanently anchored in the Top Three:
Ryan Leaf.
Tony Mandarich.
Brian Bosworth.
Reggie Bush isn’t ready for that list just yet. But the Saints’ running back is sitting in the green room. In many ways, he’s the perfect candidate to one day turn this list into a Fraud Four, because he embodies the singular talent that landed the other three on the register.
Like Leaf, he was a No. 2 overall who just as easily could have been No. 1; like Bosworth, his college career was stormy and surreal and stuffed with hype and hyperbole; like Mandarich, he was considered a fool-proof, can’t-miss, ready-made star.
“It hasn’t been everything that I would have liked it to have been,” Bush, 25 next month, admitted. “I think in a perfect world I would have wanted everything to happen much quicker. I kind of imagined that I’d have a couple Super Bowl rings by now and a couple Pro Bowls. It’s a tough league. It’s a league of all-stars.”
But Bush was expected to be the boss of bosses amid that galaxy of talent. His high-school highlight reel is the stuff of YouTube legend. Some of his college games at USC, he looked like Bo Jackson in that old Tecmo Bowl video game, winning the Heisman along the way. Who wasn’t he likened to coming out? Barry Sanders? Gale Sayers? O.J. Simpson?
Here’s a fun fact for you: In 2009, Chris Johnson (and please raise your hand if you knew that Johnson played his college ball at East Carolina) rushed for 2,006 yards. In four years, Reggie Bush has run for 1,904 yards. Total.
Here’s the thing, though: Leaf never had a single NFL moment to compare with the breathtaking, juking, jiving touchdown run Bush pulled off against the Cardinals in the Saints’ playoff opener three weeks ago.
Neither did Mandarich. And the only time you ever saw Bosworth the pro make a play that was constantly rewound on SportsCenter, it was because he was being run over by Jackson, looking like a real-life Tecmo Bowl patsy.
That almost makes it worse. That day against Arizona, we saw every bit of what Bush is capable of. We saw every ounce of his extraordinary (almost other-worldly) talent. So it makes you wonder: Where has that guy been the last four years? Why is he waiting for the engraved invitation to wow us?
“It’s definitely been a humbling experience for me,” Bush said. “But this is the kind of league you can’t expect to just walk in and dominate. It doesn’t work that way for anyone.”
Well, actually, it worked out exactly that way for Peyton Manning, who was Bush eight years before Bush was, who was the No. 1 pick in the draft and spent a year absorbing a harsh internship before blossoming into essentially what we’ve grown accustomed to by Year Two: His generation’s version of Unitas, Graham and Montana, all rolled into one ubiquitous football force.
Why Manning right away? Why not Bush yet, if ever?
“These things are an inexact science,” Saints coach Sean Payton said earlier this week. “If it was easy, you wouldn’t see so many football people with gray hair.”
Reggie Bush doesn’t have any gray, and why should he? He’s young. He’s rich. He’s famous. He has a Kardashian on his arm. What else could man want?
Well, a Super Bowl ring would be nice. And if he plays a big role in securing it, it just might keep his name off the kind of list nobody ever wants to see their name on. Especially way at the top.
Pro Bowl still just a big con
You know what would’ve been at least as good an idea last week as having a Pro Bowl in Miami that a dozen players couldn’t play in, a bunch of others refused to play in, and Bryant McKinnie partied his way out of? Re-instituting the old Playoff Bowl.
What? You never heard of the Playoff Bowl? For 10 years, from 1960-69, the game matched either the second-place teams from the NFL’s two divisions or, after 1968, the losers of the league’s semifinal games.
Vince Lombardi, in particular, hated these games, even though his Packers only played in one of them, using a 40-23 stomping of the Browns in 1964 to launch a three-year run as NFL champions. He called it the “[bleep] Bowl.”
Which is about the right thing to call a bowl when you consider the Lions, who haven’t won a real championship since 1957 and have won only one playoff game since, won the first three Playoff Bowls. And yet . . .
Think about what a Jets-Vikings game would have meant last week: No Brett Favre. No Bart Scott. Mark Sanchez on a bum knee meaningless game? Probably not.
But would it really have been any worse than the Pro Bowl?
Vac’s Whacks:
* The dude from “Man vs. Food” ate a 48-ounce steak at Shula’s Steak House on South Beach on Wednesday in front of what was described as “a capacity crowd.” I am sorry to report that at exactly the same time, in Pompano, I finished my veal parm in front of one waiter at Carrabba’s who couldn’t lock the door behind me fast enough. I’m in the wrong line of work.
* Spotted at my hotel yesterday: Emmitt Smith, a Hall of Famer in about another 48 hours, looking for a replacement key for his room . . . and needing to show his driver’s license. Stars! They’re just like us!
* I don’t suspect that Sean Payton ever tells very many knock-knock jokes, but next to Jim Caldwell he comes across as Sam Kinison.