Why should Reggie Bush be allowed to keep his 2005 Heisman Trophy? It's the same reason that Pete Rose should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Heisman trophy is traditionally awarded to the most outstanding player of NCAA Football for a given year. In 2005, that person was Reggie Bush at the time of the voting (it could be argued that Vince Young's performance in the BCS National Championship game that year made him more deserving of the trophy than Bush). The argument against this, of course, is that Reggie Bush illegally accepted money and gifts from various sources, and for that reason he cheated and is undeserving of the award. But think about it this way: the money didn't make him any better as an athlete. Whatever he could have bought with the money wasn't anything that didn't come with his scholarship. If we were talking about some kid from a low-budget program with insufficient facilities, there might be an argument, but this is USC, a private school that has quite clearly invested a good portion of its funds in its football program. This takes us back to Pete Rose and his ban from baseball and the Hall of Fame. His gambling didn't affect a single one of his 4,256 hits, but because he broke the rules he was punished (you could argue that the Reggie Bush case should follow precedent and follow the lead of the Pete Rose decision, but keep in mind that the baseball world is split between keeping the ban in place and removing it).
The point is, Reggie Bush was the best player on the field in 2005 and his breaking the rules didn't affect that. It's up to the Heisman Trust to decide whether the trophy should take into account off-the-field actions (in which case Tim Tebow should have three Heismans on his shelf), or to keep it to a football-only rubric.
Whatever ends up being decided, Reggie Bush and his career will be immune to this (look where Matt Leinart's Heisman got him) while the future of USC football is filled with question marks and speculation.
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