It's a strange justice at work in the University of Cincinnati athletic department lately. The heavy hand of the law has taken curious slaps at Antwan Peek and Donald Little.

        Peek is a football player who just served a one-game suspension for getting between $100 and $300 worth of free textbooks for a course he wasn't taking. He gave the books to his brother. Little is a basketball player who was convicted of being disorderly in a bar and driving recklessly.

        Peek is suspended a game for violating an NCAA rule. Little misses no games for breaking the law. It's better at UC to be rowdy in a bar and drive irresponsibly than to filch a few schoolbooks for a family member.

At least if you want to play games.

        “He was deceitful,” UC athletic director Bob Goin said of Peek on Thursday. Little, Goin decided, “made a mistake.”

        (Actually, Little made mistake(s), the driving problem coming just 16 days after the bar problem. But anyway ...)

        UC turned in Peek to the NCAA for “credibility” reasons, said Goin. It reinstated Little to the basketball team for humanitarian purposes. Make of that what you will.

Skewed logic

        No one suggests what Peek did was OK, or that UC was wrong for reporting it, though feel free to wonder if it couldn't have been handled in-house, by calling Peek a knucklehead and telling him to take the books back.

        It may even work out that reinstating Little was a good move. It's easy for Goin and Bob Huggins to go Father Flanigan when the soul they're saving stands 6-feet-11 and weighs 260 pounds. Huggins should get a slight break on this one, because he has stuck his reputation out for other players, and because Little — who averaged six points and six rebounds a game last season — is not quite Kenyon Martin.

        If Little wises up and realizes there is money in being 6-11 and strong — if he stops making bad decisions and starts acting like an adult — Goin and Huggins are vindicated. Little gets a degree and a chance to play professionally. Everyone wins.

        But it doesn't change the skewed way the school handled these cases.

Sports and responsibility

        Goin's argument is “if Donald Little hadn't been been an athlete, nothing would have happened to him” at school. That's true, as far as it goes. But the day college jocks realize sports are a privilege and not a right, there will be fewer bar boxers and dangerous drivers.

        Certain responsibilities come with getting a free education and being one of the most highly visible members of the university. If you want to go to school for free and play games, don't fight in bars and don't drive with an open container of alcohol in your lap. It's not that hard.

        Goin says the two punishments aren't related. The NCAA administered one, UC the other. He says he wouldn't have suspended Peek, either, but it wasn't his call.

        “I wrestled with it,” Goin said. “Who knows what the magic wand is?”

        Beats me. Whoever was wielding it in these cases missed the mark, though. By a mile.

        E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.

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