This is a strange time to be Reggie Bush. You know Reggie Bush, right? It seems safe to assume that just about everyone has heard of him, even if not everyone knows him for the same reason.

If you’re an NFL fan, you probably followed his solid 11-season career that included a 2010 Super Bowl title with Drew Brees’ New Orleans Saints. On the other hand, if you’re someone who thinks a nose tackle might be a type of rhinoplasty, you’re likely familiar with his three-year, on-and-off relationship with Kim Kardashian. (This is a safe space here; no one will judge you for keeping track of the Kardashians’ significant others.)

But he’s best known as perhaps the greatest college football running back of his or any era. Bush was an electrifying talent who won the 2005 Heisman Trophy, although he later relinquished it following an investigation into funds he had accepted from a recruiter. So, while the NCAA’s Board of Governors’ decision last month to move toward allowing student-athletes to receive compensation for their name and likeness was lauded by observers, it clearly feels like a complicated shift for someone like Bush. After all, he was punished for actions that some believe shouldn’t be forbidden to begin with, given how many others profit off of players’ success.

And while this current sports-free moment, during an extremely uncertain year, may indeed seem to be a strange time to interview any professional athlete—or an analyst like Bush, who retired from the NFL in December 2017—he had a lot to say when Playboy sat down with him virtually to discuss the new gig he picked up amid the pandemic. After all, sports isn’t the only form of televised entertainment needing to pivot in the COVID-19 era, and so the 35-year-old star and wife Lilit can be seen this week on Fox’s unscripted Celebrity Watch Party. If you’ve ever wanted to watch celebrities while they watch TV (please say you’ve never wanted to do that), well, you’re in luck.

“We need positive stuff, because on social media it seems like it’s all negative, all drama-filled, and you start to live in this different world where you get paralyzed with Instagram and Twitter,” Bush tells Playboy about his reason for participating in the show. “It happens to me all the time. So we try to remind ourselves to not focus too much on the negative—the police brutality, the politics, the pandemic. We try to digress a little from time to time, because we need normalcy.”

If you’re surprised the athlete would voluntarily bring up violence, politics and world health during the very first question of an interview ostensibly pegged to promoting a TV show about watching celebrities watch TV, then you clearly don’t know the guy as well as you thought you did. (See, we knew you shouldn’t have answered that “You know Reggie Bush, right?” question from the first paragraph quite so hastily.)

In fact, it’s perhaps appropriate for him to appear on a show called Celebrity Watch Party, as he’s been a constant observer throughout his life. During his playing days, he was studying defensive schemes, and now, he’s sizing up our culture, our leaders, our status quo. A lifelong activist, Bush has aided causes ranging from donating to the unhoused, to improving lives in Africa. Louisiana police Captain Rob Callahan once called him a “god” for the work he had done in helping New Orleans rebuild after Katrina and added, “I don’t think anyone here doesn’t know what he’s doing for hurricane victims.”

Bush supported social-justice issues even during his playing days, which can be a difficult decision to make, as NFL personalities such as Colin Kaepernick have learned. Back in December 2014, Bush wore an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt while warming up before a game as a tribute to Eric Garner, killed by a police officer’s chokehold. More recently, the star has been vocal about the death of Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased and shot to death by a group of white men while jogging.

“Unfortunately there’s been a lot of negativity from our president,” shares Bush, who sounds like someone contemplating a future in politics. “I believe this is affecting our country and the fear that our country is living in. When our leadership is not in the right place, and you mix that with a pandemic, you mix that with a market crash and all these things we’re seeing now on social media, right before our eyes—this is a ticking time bomb. This is not a good place for us to be in as a country.”

He’s one of a growing number of athletes who have chosen to wield their platforms to help propel change. Earlier this month, the Players Coalition, an organization co-founded by former NFL wideout Anquan Boldin, published a letter calling for an investigation into Arbery’s death. Among the more than 60 current and former players signing it was Tom Brady, the enduring face of the NFL who has previously been criticized for a seeming indifference toward social good, not to mention his apparent friendship with Donald Trump.

Bush admits he wasn’t expecting to find Brady’s name. “When Tom Brady signed that letter, it was so powerful to me, because to be honest with you, I’ve never seen him step into the limelight in that way,” he says. “I’ve always seen Tom Brady the football player and the businessman and the marketing genius, but I’ve never seen Tom Brady standing up for other people—and Black people—in the community. A lot of people think it’s easy just to sign your name to something, just because it’s the right thing to do. But it’s not easy when you have that kind of star power behind you. You’re putting a lot on the line.”

Brady is 42 and still making headlines when he changes teams. Such longevity is not expected of those who play running back, given the toll on the body and the speed required. Bush retired at age 32 and still believes he has something left in the tank, although the price was no longer worth it. “I know I could help teams,” he emphasizes. “I don’t think it—I know it. But that chapter has been closed in my life, and I’m very comfortable with that.”

One way he does envision still helping people in the game of football is as a mentor to rising players facing the same decisions he encountered. “Guidance is the one thing that young athletes coming through the college system miss on so much. I missed on it,” he recalls about his painful past. “They’re about to start paying college athletes. This is something that has never been experienced before, and it’s going to destroy some people if their foundation is not in the right place.”

Bush, who grew up in San Diego with his mom and stepdad and was a high school standout before heading to USC in 2003, enjoyed a college ride that was genuinely special. Along with quarterback Matt Leinart, the running back led USC to 34 straight victories, not to mention consecutive seasons ending with the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll in 2003 and 2004. (Leinart became an inadvertent matchmaker when he introduced Bush to Kim Kardashian in 2007, the year her family’s reality show debuted.) In 2005, Bush led all of college football in total running yards during his Heisman season. The Saints selected him with the second overall pick in the 2006 NFL draft.

“This was Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson. That’s how big it was,” Saints coach Sean Payton reminisced about Bush’s post-college arrival when the player was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in June 2019.

Of course, this halcyon era has since been viewed through a different lens. In 2010, an NCAA investigation found that Bush accepted funds from third parties as set up by his stepfather. Ultimately, the school was stripped of its 2004 national title, while Bush forfeited his Heisman and was forced to disassociate from USC for 10 years, which is expected to end later in 2020.

As one might expect, Bush’s experiences have given him a lot to think about regarding money.

“The one thing I wish I had early in my career is proper financial knowledge,” the star says. “I hired good agents, and I hired a good team. But I allowed that good team to make decisions for me. I’m not saying I’m going bankrupt, but if I had the proper knowledge back then, some things would be different.”

He continues, “People just assume, ‘Well, you got all this money, so you’re good.’ It’s actually the opposite. The more money you have, the more danger you’re in. Because now you’re a freaking open target for a lot of people. It’s a nasty world out there, and it’s about to get nastier. You’re going to really start to see the true colors of a lot of people, and a lot of businesses too. You’re going to see people doing some crazy stuff to make money, because our market is crashing.”

These kinds of thoughts seem unlikely to fade for him anytime soon. Nonetheless, Bush is also focused on his present, which includes happily raising three children with Lilit (“We have such good chemistry,” he gushes) and working as a Fox Sports pundit. Against the odds, he’s clearly, to borrow his words, in the right place. After all, when people want to watch you watch TV, you must be doing something right.

“I’m happy where I am,” he confirms, and he truly seems to mean it. Maybe this isn’t such a strange time to be Reggie Bush after all.