Your hoop sleaze update for today

First came Louisville, compelling Iona College to begin sweating and tugging at its collar because it closed its eyes and hired the overseer of Lullville's infamy, Al Capone (played in the movie by Rick Pitino.)

Then it was Kansas, whose basketball program the NCAA last week said was "even dirtier than Capone's operation" and "a bleeping bleep-bleep criminal enterprise," although those are not direct quotes as far as you know.

Now?

Oh, lordy. Oh, saints preserve us.

Now St. K and the supplicants at the altar of Do It Right and Pure In Word And Deed are on the griddle.

This upon the news that attorneys for Zion Williamson's former marketing firm have asked Zion to air his dirty laundry -- i.e., admit his mother and stepfather demanded and received a pile of graft from Adidas and Nike (and also people linked to Duke) to sign with the Blue Devils and pimp Nike or Adidas.

If this in fact happened, Do It Right and Pure In Word And Deed stand convicted of being just another bunch of hoopster Capones engaged in the bidness of doing bidness.

Now, this could all just be part of the legal whizzing match between Williamson and the marketing firm he's trying to dump -- kind of a corporate version of "If you leave me, I'll tell everyone how you used to wear sexy lingerie under your uniform like Ebby Calvin 'Nuke' LaLoosh." But is anyone at this point naïve enough to believe Duke was immune to these shenanigans just because it was Duke?

First off, this is actually old news, because the FBI probe into college basketball included some rather loud rumblings about Zion and Duke. And second, the incestuous triangulation among blue-chip prospects, the apparel companies that underwrite their AAU teams and the nation's top college programs is old news itself.

It's been going on to one degree or another for more than 30 years, and thus long since passed from the realm of scandal to just, well, the bidness of doing bidness. That it's sleaze of a high order is undeniable to those of us not disposed to lawlessness. But for college buckets, it's just how the sausage gets made.

After all, who's gonna carp about what's appropriate or inappropriate if it ends with the alma mater starring in "One Shining Moment" on the first Monday in April?

So, yeah, nothing to see here, in a sense. Just more bidness in the boardrooms of Duke Inc., Kansas Inc., Everybody Inc.