But this missive – on the eve of Wear Red to Support the University of Louisville day – seems to ask for it. So let’s go.

It’s written by a local journalist/UL booster, in light of that school’s final burial under the weight of its massively corrupt leadership over many years. It argues that the way to respond to an institution that has thoroughly disgraced itself, and because of that disgrace marches smartly toward bankruptcy, unaccreditation, and the death penalty, is with ever more fervent support. Let us see how it tries to make this rather counterintuitive case.

If You Stop Supporting the University of Louisville, You’ll Hurt Us All

is the headline, a species of appeal reminiscent of Every Time You Masturbate, God Kills a Kitten. Sure, sure, stop supporting UL, and watch the entire city of Louisville die.

It may sound counterintuitive, but now is the time for University of Louisville fans and alumni to rally around their athletic teams, their academic programs, the students and faculty.

The future of the school and the city depends on it.

The cancer is gone. Cut out Wednesday morning in about 10 minutes worth of meetings during which interim President Greg Postel essentially fired basketball coach Rick Pitino and athletic director Tom Jurich.

Well, yes, he’s right that it sounds counterintuitive, so give him points for realizing that what he’s about to write is the essence of the uphill battle. But given that UL is (indulge us) primarily an academic institution, and that depraved indifference to that fact destroyed it, the writer ought to have rearranged his list of three to feature UL’s students.

Not even the faculty deserves a primary place on this list, because the bizarrely passive and silent UL faculty bears its share of the blame for this outcome. Most universities under threat produce people like Jay Smith; most not under threat have always at the ready people like John Banzhaf; most are capable of generating not just gadflies and op/ed writers, but coalitions of the concerned who produce petitions and protests, etc. Maybe I missed it, but UL’s professors just sat there. They deserve condemnation, not support.

The writer should have removed athletics from his list altogether. Several larcenous administrations also did a lot of damage to the school, to be sure; but you don’t get to spend decades bellowing your support for criminally insane seven million dollar coaches as they and their assistant coaches slash the school’s jugular, and then just turn around and go on bellowing for their replacements. Which brings SOS to her next point:

The cancer is gone. Cut out Wednesday morning in about 10 minutes …

Here’s where we know the writer is not only an emotional blackmailer, but a bit of a con man. We’re cured! Lord, I can walk again! Praise the lord! Turns out it was just a matter of scalpeling that pesky bit of cancer around the locker room …

Fraid not. You don’t get to declare the game over and start a new one. Remember South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions? The University of Louisville needs something like that.

But after embarrassment after embarrassment in the basketball program — including this involvement in what appears to be the biggest basketball scandal since the 1950s point-shaving affairs — why should you support the university?

Simply because you should.

These aren’t embarrassments. They’re crimes, and as accessory to decades of crimes, UL needs to pull back and shut down a bit and do some thinking. It’s far too soon to rally the troops, especially if the troops are only about athletics.

Failure of the KFC Yum Center — which is a very real possibility if folks stop attending Louisville basketball games — hurts us all. Everyone.

The comical, trashy name of that arena is indeed an embarrassment, and it speaks volumes about the corporate lowering UL – a university – has been pleased to undergo. And I’m afraid it ain’t much of an argument to point out that since the UL decided it was smart to assume a $700 million debt to get its finger lickin’ yummy thing built, it’s now our responsibility to sit there watching bribed players and criminal coaches running around a court.

The rest of it’s just funny, like one of those Rodney Dangerfield routines in which he lists his many misfortunes.

Members of the past administration had looted the university’s fundraising arm of millions of dollars in payouts for themselves and their friends.

The governor’s ham-handed attempt to reorganize the school’s board of trustees left its accreditation in jeopardy.

The basketball program was already headed for probation because it was paying for hookers for teenage recruits.

But here’s the good news.

SOS asks: At this point, who’s hanging around for the good news? There isn’t any good news – it’s all bad, and UL is going to have to take the fall it has abundantly rigged up for itself. The only advice SOS has for UL right now does indeed have to do with its students. Attend another institution.