Schools Are in Need of Hire Education

Was it worth it?

That’s the question that Jim Harrick, like so many other people around college basketball, must be wondering after another messy day for the sport.

Does anyone still buy the notion that the difference between the NBA and the NCAA is that the college kids play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back? College athletes have less to do with the campus than the school’s custodial staff. At least the janitors set foot in the classrooms.

A big tornado has swept through and ripped the roof off the barn of college athletics. The twister touched down on Georgia’s campus in Athens on Monday, when Harrick was suspended with pay. His long-term prospects are just slightly above Lavin level.

Harrick’s son had already lost his job. The team’s seniors lost their last chance to play in the Southeastern Conference and NCAA tournaments.

All for the sake of 90 points.

That was Tony Cole’s scoring total for the Bulldogs, before leaving with a bitter taste in his mouth that prompted him to spit out allegations of improprieties by the Harricks.

Harrick doggedly recruited Cole, even though Cole had attended three high schools and two prep schools in five years. He couldn’t get him into Rhode Island because Cole didn’t meet the NCAA’s eligibility requirements. After Cole had played at two junior colleges, averaging 16 points one year and 22 the next, Harrick brought him to his new place of employment at Georgia.

Cole averaged 5.6 points in 16 games last season, before he was suspended during an investigation into an alleged dormitory rape. (Cole was charged with aggravated assault, but the felony was dropped later.) After he was kicked off the team last year, he began singing like Mariah Carey, telling tales of payoffs and phony grades to ESPN and then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Georgia dropped the hammer on Monday. It suspended Harrick and ruled itself ineligible for the conference tournament and the NCAA tournament after finding “academic fraud involving not only Tony Cole but two current members on the basketball team,” according to University President Michael Adams. The current players are Chris Daniels and Rashad Wright.

Said Athletic Director Vince Dooley, “We’re not talking about allegations, we’re talking about findings of the most serious nature.”

Cole brought all this on Georgia. More accurately, Harrick brought it on with his pursuit of Cole.

Harrick’s willingness to seek out a player with as sketchy a background as Cole, who proved to be far from a sure-fire star, shows how desperate some college basketball coaches are to win.

They’ll bend the rules and flirt with NCAA danger for even marginal talent.

And in that regard, they’re right in line with college athletic directors and presidents.

Harrick’s transgressions at UCLA and Rhode Island didn’t deter Georgia from hiring him. Jerry Tarkanian’s numerous battles with the NCAA didn’t stop Fresno State from hiring him to resuscitate its basketball program.

Now both schools will sit out the Big Dance, self-punishment as a result of the potential NCAA violations brought on by their coaches -- a statistician reportedly wrote term papers for Tarkanian’s players.

These problems aren’t born of exceptions made for exceptional players. They’re the norm even for normal players, even at schools that aren’t one star away from making a national championship run.

Why bother with the charade that big-time college sports has any affiliation with higher education?

St. Bonaventure went from obscurity to the top of the rundowns because of an ineligible junior college transfer, Jamil Terrell. A player who averaged 6.9 points a game.

This, only a few months after an NCAA survey released last fall showed that St. Bonaventure athletes had an 87% graduation rate, tied for fifth-best for students who entered school in the fall of 1995.

In a statement, St. Bonaventure President Robert Wickenheiser said, “These results merely reinforce the fact that we succeed in the two areas we most emphasize: academic excellence and Franciscan values, which recognize the dignity and worth of all human beings.

“Our athletes are not just athletes, but student-athletes, and we prepare them for success in life as well as in athletics.”

That would be the same Robert Wickenheiser who resigned Sunday in the wake of a sorry sequence of events that began when it was revealed that Terrell had earned a certificate in welding, not a junior college degree. After the team was banned from the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament, the team and the university decided to prepare for success in life by quitting on the last two games of the regular season.

How many other teams would be ineligible for the tournament if a former player came clean about misdoings?

The NCAA and its members created this mess, so they’re the only ones who can bail themselves out. If they stop pretending that most athletes in revenue sports are there to get an education, and that schools care whether or not they do, they can get back to putting on their show without any trouble. It’s not as if these programs are running afoul of the law; they’re just finding it impossible to locate a happy medium between ivory tower and hardwood court.

Nothing Harrick has done at Georgia would be held against him as an NBA coach. There’s already speculation that Harrick, whose office wasn’t too far from Donald Sterling’s Malibu spread during Harrick’s Pepperdine days, could be headed to Clipper Country.

Harrick could be reunited with Lamar Odom, whom he coached at Rhode Island.

And the only way anyone would detect anything suspicious would be if Odom did get money.

Unlike in college basketball, no one expects the Clippers to pay their players.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.