Reggie Bush Takes Shot at ESPN for 'Clickbait' Reporting of Comments on Paying College Athletes

The topic of paying NCAA student-athletes is a divisive one and everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter. Former USC star Reggie Bush is now a Fox Sports analyst and shared his thoughts in an interview with Playboy.

One key quote pulled from that interview and placed into an ESPN story notes Bush said paying athletes could "destroy some people." This was a simple aggregated article and his comments did not appear too controversial. Then, Bush blew up the story by calling out ESPN.

Dear @espn Please take this story down, I did not speak to you, I never gave you approval to write this story, this is not what I said nor the context I said it in, and your trying to use my name with this bogus headline for clickbait. Let’s not allow this to happen again... pic.twitter.com/GDHYUpPfAs
— Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) May 25, 2020

Bush seems to be missing the point here. ESPN did not directly quote him and made it clear the quotes were pulled from his Playboy interview. This was not clickbait, but rather ESPN just running a story about a relevant topic.

Reggie Bush is phrasing this to imply that ESPN made up some quotations, when in reality he's upset that a competitor to his employer is aggregating an interview he did with a third-party outlet.

ESPN doesn't need his "approval" to do that! He gave the interview willingly! https://t.co/Bh8AEBx0No
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 25, 2020

Quoting interviews, and giving the proper attribution, is a part of the media world. This is nothing new and if Bush didn't want his thoughts shared he should not have said them in the first place.