The saga of troubled Ohio State football star Maurice Clarett took another sad turn Wednesday when the university announced it had suspended him for the season after a 2 1/2-month investigation over allegations he had received improper gifts.

It was a difficult process, but the university did the right thing. It found that Clarett committed multiple violations of two NCAA bylaws, one regarding acceptance of improper benefits, the other on false or misleading statements to the NCAA.

Nobody wins here. Ohio State gets a PR black eye and questions about the legitimacy of its national championship, won against top-ranked Miami in January. That could turn into more than questions if it is discovered that someone in an official capacity at OSU knew about Clarett's improper benefits.

Clarett faces choices that may be of limited appeal to him: stay at Ohio State and go to classes; sue the NFL to enter the draft early; jump to the low-paying Canadian Football League; transfer to another big-division school and accept additional penalties; transfer to a small school and play right away.

This episode provides the latest evidence of the pressures on top-flight college players and athletic programs to succeed - right now. Such pressure has led many universities recently into embarrassments over their programs' integrity - Baylor, Nevada-Las Vegas, Iowa State, Wisconsin, St. Bonaventure and others.

So it was good this week to see a highly respected university take a giant if unorthodox step toward taking control over the sports monster. Vanderbilt University shocked the collegiate sports world on Tuesday by announcing it will eliminate its athletics department and the post of athletics director, lumping intercollegiate sports with student recreation in a new department directly controlled by an assistant chancellor - that is, under academic authority.

The force behind this change, ironically, is former OSU president Gordon Gee, now Vanderbilt's chancellor and designated change agent. College athletics departments, he said, have operated almost as separate, autonomous institutions, creating a culture "that is disconnected from our students, faculty and other constituents, where responsibility is diffuse, the potential for abuse considerable and the costs - both financial and academic - unstustainable."

Hear, hear.

Such a bold move carries extra weight coming from Vandy, which competes in the SEC and has the nation's third-highest graduation percentage among football players (91 percent, behind only Boston College's 95 percent and Notre Dame's 92 percent). Making athletics answer to the academic side seems so obvious, you wonder why it hasn't been done before.

The point is not, as some pundits are saying, that Vanderbilt has "given up" on athletics. The point is that the school apparently refuses to give up on its core academic mission in the pursuit of athletic glory - and is loath to let its students do so, either. There's a valuable lesson there for universities nationwide, and for all the Maurice Claretts whose on-field talents tantalize them.