“When universities and school boards have to start paying out substantial settlements, the debate will change,” says Daniel Okrent, who has written histories of both baseball and Prohibition.

But no, that can’t be true. Maybe school boards. Universities all over this country are happily bankrupting themselves to offer their students a game they don’t want to see, with players toward whom they feel contempt and fear. Many universities consider multimillion dollar payouts to abusive coaches, public relations firms, lawyers, and student victims of sexual and physical assault nothing more than the price of doing business. They regularly pay huge sums to clean up epic tailgating trash on campus, and their equally regular post-student-riot costs – riots of course stretch deep into the local community – are astronomical.

Universities have worked into the football and basketball equation totally ruined academic reputations, as well as the pesky business of constantly being at the receiving end of national ridicule on late-night comedy shows. It’s nothing to them to buy up huge swathes of tickets to their own games, since students aren’t going to the games and you need to keep your tickets-bought statistics up or you’ll get in trouble with the NCAA and other groups.

Universities are places where the president makes $500,000 and the coach makes five million. Coach earns his salary by carving out scholarship admission for concussed violence-prone 300-pound steroidal applicants.

(26 CAL U FOOTBALL PLAYERS HAVE BEEN IN TROUBLE WITH THE LAW

That’s a third of the roster.

We’re only counting the last three years.

More than half of the team currently has active charges.

“Out on bail but still on the field.” Corey Ford, one of the U Cal players arrested for assault last week, has in a separate case pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. He was in Washington DC, New Year’s day, drunk and driving on the wrong side of the road. He hit a bicyclist and left him in a coma.

Oh, it was also a hit and run.

Who is the coach at Cal U? Why is this person the coach at Cal U?

Here he is, and he’s got quite the pedigree. A protege of one of the sleaziest coaches out there, the notorious Rich Rodriguez. Oh, and his academic specialty seems prophetic: master’s degree from one of America’s sleaziest football factories – West Virginia University – in — wait for it — safety management.)

Substantial settlements for brain damaged players? So what. A drop in the bucket.

And after all, what is college but a place to send your kid to get and give brain damage?