The NCAA rose to its full three feet in height (as it usually does when money is the issue) and declared that athletic success is no predictor of big revenues, and big revenues are no predictor of athletic success.

In other words, NCAA president Myles Brand, who in his previous job running the University of Indiana cast himself as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is telling us that . . . well, something is going on, but it isn't what you think it is.

In that way, it is the typical NCAA report: "You're wrong, but we're not prepared to explain to you what's right.''

The report asserts that the average NCAA member school spends about 3.5 percent of its budget on intercollegiate athletics (and as we know, you can get an average by including Kenyon College with The University of Oklahoma).

It also claims that higher spending on football or basketball had no effect on net operating revenue (which, again, is probably true if you're putting Annunciata in with Georgia).

Best yet, it says that there is no correlation between spending and measurable increases in the academic quality of new students or alumni donations.

In other words, money doesn't explain winning, and winning doesn't explain money, and besides, we're not paying the players because we don't have to, and that's that.

That seems to be at least part of the impetus for what Brand called a "myth-breaking" study, to show that there are only a dozen athletic programs that are self-supporting, and that university presidents should re-examine the school's financial stake in their athletic departments.

So two billion-dollar industries, college football and college basketball, really aren't, and all that money TV and alums chunk into programs really doesn't exist, and all those trophies don't make the schools more attractive to high school brainboxes, and those new stadiums and facility improvements just popped up through the auspices of the Building Fairies Union No. 2181.

Well, then, a question. Why are so many university presidents, presumably smart men, so wasteful about money they don't have for returns they can't get? Do they know nothing the rest of us do know, or something the rest of us don't?

And why are so many coaches making so much money to do something that apparently brings so little money into the schools?

Frankly, children, something smells here, and it isn't the hockey team's equipment room.

As any moron can see, there is money coming in, and lots of it. True, it is disproportionately distributed to a select number of schools, but it is difficult to imagine that only 12 schools are running a profit year in and year out.

Twelve, out of more than a thousand? You have better odds of getting 21 by hitting on 19.

But this "myth-breaking" study is clearly designed to convince someone of something, and since the NCAA is no more likely to convince big athletic schools of spending less on its big athletes than it is of convincing the science department to convince its students to stop using beakers and just cup their hands together, they must be trying to convince the rest of us that there's no money in sports.

And if there's no money in sports, that must mean there's no money for those athlete stipends people keep carrying on about.

There is, of course, a major flaw in this argument, and that is in assuming that people who believe players should be paid for their work are going to read any ""myth-breaking'' studies, let alone believe them.

Now, we don't want to turn this into another boilerplate "The NCAA is pure evil" rave-up, even though its stupidities, venalities, inconsistencies and self-absorptions are always a bright and shiny "kick me" sign for any lazy nitwit with a pen or microphone.

But in the absence of any other reason to commission, let alone emit, such a study, we can only assume that it was done to show that the NCAA isn't the cash cow we think it is, or that if it is a cash cow, it has remarkably little udder capacity.

And frankly, we're just not prepared to simply take the NCAA's word for it, not when the advantages of claiming poverty while shoveling it in with both hands are so apparent.

Besides, if all this is true, there seems to be a complete absence of proposed solutions to this apparent crisis. Dope-slap the presidents into making the athletic department stop sponging off the general fund? Make the alums upchuck more money to keep the tax folks from padlocking the swimming pool? Ask the government to create a fully funded cabinet position for college sports?

Nope, nothing. Just "We haven't got what you say we have, and there's nothing we can do to get more of what we don't have now.''

Well, in that case, I guess we'll just sit back and wait for the Southeastern Conference to fold then, and for Mike Krzyzewski to start selling his furniture on eBay. It makes a fella weep just thinking about it.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.