Not saying Reggie is innocent, but a couple of comments:
#1 This country is in the midst of a wild "speculative bubble" in real estate values. This is best evidenced by examining the ratio of "house values" to "rent values". These ratios are at record highs and in the view of many are not sustainable. Rent levels are well below related mortgage levels in most areas of the country that have experienced real estate appreciation over the past decade.
#2 Is the more "interesting issue". Hypothetically, say that a "Marketing Company" starts "courting" the parents of a college star. The athlete is not brought into the "loop" of any of these arrangements. In fact, a guy like Bush has had folks chasing after him on a 24/7 basis for 2 years. As long as he himself doesn't accept "cash" , " cars", etc, he assumes that he's kept himself "clean". Is it reasonable to expect that such a player while at college would reasonably "audit" (and most of these guys aren't business majors) every type of car lease, house lease, etc that their parents have independently entered into? My answer is NO. I do not know (or really terribly care) as to the official NCAA position in this area. Kansas University offered Danny Manning's dad a job to help entice Danny to go to KU. I don't know how explicit New Era was with Mr and Mrs Bush, but if they were smart they would have employed the right level of "vagueness" or lack of "linkage" between the house lease and Reggie. Using someone else's math on an earlier post, let's say that the mortgage payment on this house was $5,000/month and let's that at least some rental levels in this market would support a 50% lease factor ($2,500 per month). Could the Bush's afford $2,500 per month? I don't know. Let's say that they were given a sweetheart deal of $1,500 a month without Reggie knowing the particulars. Over 1 year that's a total of a whopping $12,000 (~ the cost of 3 West Coast business trips for east coast marketeer to pursue a hot "west coast" property).
I'm not saying that the fact pattern is exactly like I've layed out in #2 above, but it could be and if New Era was "smart" about it it probably is pretty close. Unless there is a lot more to this story than above, this should not be a major NCAA transgression (did USC even know?, should USC "audit" every job offer or transaction entered into by every athletes parents to assure "arms length" dealings?)
For someone to say that the character flaws inherent in this type of situation are similar to the baggage that a Randy Moss, Chris Henry, Onterrio Smith brought into the NFL is ludicrous.