By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

Where should we begin? The bad news at Georgia? The bad news at Fresno State? The bad news at St. Bonaventure?

College basketball has so much grime this week it needs to be taken through a car wash.

Tournament time is coming, but Fresno State won't be there. Something about academic fraud during the Jerry Tarkanian reign - which is like announcing there were purges under Stalin.

And St. Bonaventure won't be there. The Bonnies had to forfeit a bunch of games for using an ineligible player. So they decided they wouldn't even play the rest of the regular season. They took their ball and went home.

Georgia will be there, but the head coach is in the soup and his assistant/son was fired Wednesday over enough rule violation charges that, if true, would make Uga the bulldog blush. The Georgia season has turned into "60 Minutes."

March Madness, anyone? This year's NCAA Tournament bracket for the office pool may have to come in a plain brown wrapper.

So the game is soiled, just when everyone is starting to pay attention. And while it may be the players involved in the various misdeeds, the blame is elsewhere. It is the grownups in nice offices who keep making the mistakes.

The NCAA would have needed a forklift to deliver its file on Tarkanian. But Fresno State hired him anyway, craving victory and willing to take the risk on his reputation.

Now the university president stands in front of cameras, drops the hammer on his current team, and announces, "It is important this institution guarantee its academic integrity."

Harrick had untidy business at UCLA and Rhode Island, from accusations of lying to his bosses about expense accounts to a sexual harassment suit.

But basketball life in the SEC is not easy with Kentucky to the north and Florida to the south. Georgia needed a winner. When it was time to sign Jim Harrick, the past did not matter.

Now it does, amid such unsavory accusations as illegal payments and gift grades, though Harrick strongly denies them all.

At St. Bonaventure, it took officials until the last two weeks of the season to decide it wasn't the best idea to admit a junior college transfer student whose primary academic achievement had been a welding certificate, unless they were bringing him to fix a bumper.

The news came this week that Jamil Terrell was ineligible, and all his games were forfeited. Then bad turned to worse. The Bonnies voted not to play the rest of the season. The university supported the team, as everyone dove off the deep end.

So now St. Bonaventure has stiffed its league, its opponents and the paying public. It is an unprecedented temper tantrum.

There is a blind spot in college athletics, created by the rush to win, and the confusion on how to get there.

Tarkanian and Harrick came with baggage and warning labels. So how could anyone be surprised at the current headlines?

St. Bonaventure first needed a more credible admissions process, and then more backbone. If sitting down is what the Bonnies want as their legacy, they're welcome to it.

Three schools now pay the bill for being too sloppy, too negligent, too eager. Fresno State is banned, St. Bonaventure is boycotting. And on the same night Georgia beat Florida, Jim Harrick Sr. went on television to defend himself and Jim Harrick Jr. had to watch the game from a tunnel at the arena.

What a mess. Surely there is brighter news elsewhere in college athletics.

What's going on in football?

The former Florida State quarterback has been accused of betting on his team's games.

Never mind.