Problem is, as we’ve seen over the past few years of uncertainty around the program during this eternal investigation, lawsuits take time that recruits don’t have. Better for the best athletes to pick the schools without the NCAA clouds. So Miami, while fighting punishment, keeps getting punished … while awaiting yet more punishment. Quitting is easier, allowing you to have closure and move on, which is why the NCAA tends to win these fights. Think of it this way: Who do you think is more likely to quit a fight between two people if only one of them is actually doing the suffering?

Good luck with fairness here. You rarely find that when the people entrusted with dispensing it have to justify years of time and expense, have to justify their very existence. If you are going to just let UM decide its own penalties, why have an enforcement staff spending years and dollars on this case? You don’t need to pay the police if the criminals are going to police and jail themselves. Miami is not an innocent here, and the program’s history makes it a bad applicant for martyrdom as Ponzi weasel Nevin Shapiro works from jail to bring it down, but it is hard to find the truth in the extremes when the media sensationalizes the crimes and the NCAA’s prideful investigative arm has more motive to punish than it does to walk away in cut-your-losses shame.

I asked Shalala to talk this week. She declined. I thought someone this powerful, angry and wronged might want to say something more beyond that statement, but the NCAA is still off in the distance and fear has a way of silencing even the outraged and strong.

Once upon a time, UM had reason to worry about the vindictive, lying, immoral, corrupt con artist who was in jail.

But now it must concern itself with the one roaming free.