Before Duke's entry into the expanding sports noir category, complete with a hard-boiled district attorney, an exotic dancer and a team's dark secrets, there was the University of Colorado.

There were once killer parties in the fresh-air haven of Boulder, Colo., where sex, alcohol and marijuana were used as recruiting currency to lure blue-chip football players.

Before Duke's lacrosse members established a "Lord of the Flies" ethos in Durham, N.C., with its own mores, handshakes and drinking games, there was the University of Vermont.

There was once a hazing ritual in the free-love world of Burlington, Vt., where the ruling party of athletics, as in the prestigious hockey team, forced freshmen to binge drink and walk naked while holding each other's genitals.

What is the lifespan of a perverse subculture? It's the longevity of institutional denial minus the instant of a public disclosure. Once unseemly details find light — as in TV camera lights — there is a mad scramble to purge the lapsed caretakers.

At the nadir of each Colorado and Vermont embarrassment, it was clear that early attempts to obfuscate the truth by officials morphed into belated accountability. And nothing induces more university firings — euphemistically called a resignation — than an athletic program with an underbelly. By unofficial count, almost a dozen top university officials over the past five years, from athletic directors to presidents, have been forced to turn in their pompoms over a program scandal.

(This count does not include ousted coaches, like Baylor's Dave Bliss, Iowa State's Larry Eustachy and Alabama's Mike Price. Their bold lies, drinking demons and misjudgments — respectively — occupy a different space in the X's and O's of athletic self-indulgence.)

...The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C., has reported that a third of the lacrosse team's current players have been charged with misdemeanors, from public urination to underage alcohol possession; and for years, the baseball team was known for its rowdy behavior, alcohol abuse and, yes, obligatory parties with obligatory strippers.

There were many complaints about the baseball team. President Richard H. Brodhead knew, so did the athletic director, Joe Alleva, according to The News and Observer, but nothing moved Duke officials to begin an internal inquiry into the dugouts of debauchery.

Now they are under the lights. Now they act, fretting over the atmosphere of degradation, over the symptoms of misogyny. Now they are appalled by the e-mail message of a lacrosse player, Ryan McFadyen, who disclosed his wish to kill and skin strippers.