Sports Columnist Kevin B. Blackistone

There is already an apocryphal story about when Mack Brown realized Vince Young wouldn't return to the Longhorns. Young called Brown after the team returned to Austin from winning the national championship. Young told Brown he needed to see him.

Brown was keeping a lookout for his star quarterback when he saw a limousine pull up out front.

Brown knew then, the story goes, that Young was gone.

If we are to believe what we're hearing now about USC Heisman winner Reggie Bush, he probably got a limousine ride last season, too – to the Rose Bowl.

Yahoo! Sports reported Friday that Bush got $13,000 for a new whip he got pimped. (That's a new car fully loaded, for those of you who stopped listening to pop music after Pat Boone went heavy metal.) Bush got $54,000 in free rent at a three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar house. Free hotel stays. Hookups for his peeps. (That's accommodations and gifts for his family.) Lots of, as former NBA star Kenny Anderson once explained, "hangin' around money."

And he got it all before he was done carrying the football for the Trojans, who won back-to-back national titles during his reign. That means somebody's got some explaining to do or some returning of goods.

As anyone who has ever heard of SMU football can tell you, that's a no-no. College athletes aren't allowed to get special favors. That's not fair given that USC and Texas, for example, split $30 million in the Rose Bowl last season and raked in who knows how much more selling paraphernalia like T-shirts and jerseys. That's just the way it is.

The institutions the players are at are supposed to be on the lookout for such rule breaking, too, lest they be charged with lack of institutional control. We've been led to believe that the folks who run college athletics frown on these transgressions. They've taken away championships and individual awards from those who've broken these rules.

If they find the Yahoo! Sports story about Bush to be true, they should take something away from him, too, if not from the storied USC program as well.

Unless Yahoo! Sports is way off base, Bush and USC won't be able to dismiss this report as easily as they did allegations earlier that surrounded only Bush's housing. This report contains receipts down to the penny. It has dates. The IRS would be impressed.

The story charges that Bush benefited to the tune of $100,000, which means the first thing that should happen is he should hand over his hardware to Young. That would be an honorable thing to do and a start at building back any damage to reputation.

After all, as far as we know, Young was still an amateur athlete when he lit up college football fields across the country last season. Bush apparently was not, which would seem to disqualify him from winning the award for the best college football player in the country.

He may have been the best, although Young's final appearance suggested otherwise. But all that loot Bush supposedly raked in would make him more of the pro he is now as the Saints' rookie scatback.

This doesn't mean, however, that the Trojans should be stripped of all they accomplished with him there and penalized too harshly for the future. I'd argue differently if it were proved that the football program was behind the extra benefits Bush got as a way to attract him to the school and keep him happy there.

But the evidence presented so far alleges that Bush benefited from an effort of agents who wanted him to do business with them upon leaving the college ranks.

If anything, USC is guilty of not running a tight ship. Like Duke, which let its men's lacrosse team members do whatever they wished. Like Oklahoma, which apparently didn't keep tabs on their star quarterback's employment situation at a local car dealership.

Coach Pete Carroll should've been as concerned with security around his program to protect its integrity as he was worried about the offensive line to protect quarterback Matt Leinart and spring Bush and his other running back who dashed to the pros, LenDale White. The athletic director should've demanded it.

With all the highly talented football players their program is home to, this is the sort of thing they should be most concerned about. It's not boosters trying to lure kids into the program. (What high school star wouldn't want to play at Southern California?)

Instead, it's smarmy agents trying to make the first buck on them when they're ready to get out.

E-mail kblackistone@dallasnews.com