The other shoe, continued

And now, this.

Yes, sir, boys and girls. The aforementioned s*** is just gonna keeps getting real-er and real-er, not to be ungrammatical or anything.

Big-dollar college basketball is a seamy wasteland and has been for a long time, and so here's what you should remember about Sean Miller negotiating for players, and all the other revelations spilling out of this FBI investigation: Its probe was into the activities of one guy. And you can bet he's hardly alone.

No, there are likely a bunch of  Christian Dawkinses out there, hawking high school kids the way they hawk the apparel deals to which they're tied. If you were shocked by the names of the schools and players that came to light yesterday, don't be. What you should really be shocked by are the all the schools who haven't been named who play the same game.

Which I guarantee is pretty much all of them to one degree or another. Because the game is the game, and this is how you play it.

If that makes the NCAA clinging to its delusion of driven-snow amateurism look even more desperate and pathetic, well, it is desperate and pathetic. Big-time college basketball (and football) are no more an amateur enterprise than Microsoft or Amazon. They are driven by the same market forces, beholden to the same financial bottom line. They might as well be trading shares on Wall Street with everyone else.

Amateurism? The pursuit of academic opportunity and excellence?

It makes for some nice camouflage, but that's about it. Truth is, the hallowed groves of academe, where college buckets is concerned, are full of money trees. And damn near everyone is enthusiastically harvesting the crop -- except, of course, for the labor that actually makes those trees flower.

That means Your Favorite School and Your Favorite Coach are probably doing a lot of the same things Sean Miller got caught on tape doing, because Your Favorite School and Your Favorite Coach couldn't be competitive otherwise. The game is the game, and this is how you play it.

And you know what?

Not only shouldn't you be shocked by that, I'm not even sure why you'd care at this point.

That's because March Madness is coming up, and we love us some March Madness. Da Tournament is the end product of all this commerce, and its first two days are one of the highlights of the American sports year. Do you really think anyone wants to see it stripped of all its marquee draws? If you throw an NCAA Tournament and Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Arizona and everyone else worth mentioning aren't allowed to play, does it make a sound?

So do we really care about Sean Miller getting caught on a wiretap negotiating terms for some blue-chipper?

Hell. Unless you're actually breaking some federal law -- and some of these guys likely did -- that's just doin' bidness. Right?

The game is the game. This is how you play it.