Reggie Bush Discusses How He Deals With Hecklers
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - In the wake of the 10th anniversary of "Malice at the Palace," Detroit Lions running back Reggie Bush spoke with Stoney, Bill and Sara of 97.1 the Ticket about how he fights the urge to respond to hecklers. Occasions of people coming after him have been frequent, to say the least.
"How much time do you got?" Bush said, laughing. "I've got a long list. It's part of the game, and it's part of being in the spotlight. It's part of playing professional sports. We're targets any given time, no matter where you are, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, on the field, off the field. You name it, I've been through it. I think the best thing that you can do is just try to ignore it and try to understand the situation that you're in. Understand that you are a role model and there are people watching. There are going to be fans who will heckle you and talk trash to you, but that's part of the game. That to me is what drives me to be better or be great."
Bush said players have to know better than fire back at people who taunt them.
"Especially like on Twitter and stuff like that, you respond back and it gets blown up," Bush said. "You can't do that. You can't get caught up in that stuff because at the end of the day, they're just waiting for you to hit them because they want to sue you, or they're just waiting for you to do something wrong, or you say something wrong, or you react the wrong way and you get caught on camera motherf-ing somebody or flipping the bird, all those different things, so you've just got to be careful, you've got to be smart and just ignore them."
Notified about a recent piece of potential bulletin board material - an article entitled "Patriots Fans, It's Okay for You to Take the Lions for Granted" - Bush just laughed.
"That's fine," Bush said. "People are entitled to their own opinions. They're entitled to say what they want when they want. We're not expecting many people to give us a chance to go up there and win the game, and it's never been about everybody else. It's always been about us. It's been about the team in the locker room, the guys coming together.
"Nobody has a crystal ball," Bush added. "Everybody can predict ... That's not where games are won ... When the clock is zero-zero, we'll see who's won."
