The ridicule has been railroaded to the confused St. Bonaventure kids, the story of a university president and coach committing academic fraud shouted down when the basketball players took a vote the grown ups never should've let be tabulated. They packed up the balls, closed down the season and suddenly these Bonnies turned themselves into a case study of bratty, bad behavior.

	St. Bonaventure's players, including seniors Patricio Prato and Robert Cheeks, called it quits after learning the school's coach and president had sunk to the lowest levels.

This is missing the egregious essence of St. Bonaventure's shame. This is missing everything. Of course, they should've played Massachusetts and Dayton to finish the regular season. So why do you think it isn't happening? From the St. Bonaventure president, Robert Wickenheiser, to the basketball coach, Jan van Breda Kolff, these scoundrels are still trying to cover themselves for committing academic fraud, still selling these kids on the idea that St. Bonaventure was wronged -- beyond the forfeitures of games -- when it lost a bid to the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

Always, the kids watch the grown ups. And here, they see everyone running scared, passing blame and refusing to own up to the darkest hour in university history. This is the disgrace. This is the indignity. For goodness sakes, the president of the university usurped his compliance director and admissions department to get a junior college transfer, Jamil Terrell, into school without the mandatory Associates Degree for Division I eligibility, but rather a certificate in welding.

Welding certificate.

Wickenheiser has tried to dismiss its pitiful ploy as an misinterpretation of the rules, "a well-intentioned" mistake, when the truth of the matter was that it's a deliberate and defiant backdoor move to get his basketball coach a shot-blocker and rebounder. This was about winning basketball games. This is academic fraud reaching to the highest office of a university, about the darkest day St. Bonaventure has ever seen made possible with his complicity.

As a matter of disclosure, I am a St. Bonaventure graduate, Class of 1991. It isn't easy watching your alma mater show up on SportsCenter between the interview with Jim Harrick's nose growing and Fresno State's Fun House. Yet, St. Bonaventure deserves to be a national embarrassment today, if for no other reason than this is what it takes to cleanse the campus of these cancers.

Robert J. Wickenheiser is higher education's worst nightmare: A cheerleader in the president's chair who was obsessed with basketball glory. Acting presidential has never been his way. He goes to games, sits in the stands with the kids and behaves like a drunk freshman screaming at officials and taunting teams on the floor. What else is there to know about him than he lost a power struggle at Mount St. Mary's with the most respected man in college basketball, Jim Phelan, to come to St. Bonaventure and hire one of its most deplored, Jan van Breda Kolff.

The St. Bonaventure Board of Trustees has been limp on issues of conflict with Wickenheiser, but they have no choice now: The alumni are storming the gates. It's too late. He's done. Van Breda Kolff is done. Nobody survives. Somehow, Wickenheiser stayed in California on a fund-raising trip when his university was crumbling back in Olean, N.Y. As of Wednesday, school officials still hadn't seen him back on campus. The coach is hiding, too.

How does this happen to a 2,000-student university in upstate N.Y., one of the smallest schools in a major Division I conference? Easy. It goes back a few years, to the hiring of an A.D., Gothard Lane, who made a mockery of the coaching search that ended up with van Breda Kolff over favored-son candidate, Rob Lanier, the bright, young NCAA Tournament coach at Siena College now.

When van Breda Kolff realized what an ally Wickenheiser could be for his low-rent cause, he made sure to hire the president's son, Kort, as one of his assistant coaches. This was perfect for van Breda Kolff. He could speed past the compliance director, the A.D., and go right to Kort's daddy. Which he did often, on a lot of issues. Which is what happened with the recruitment of Terrell out of Coastal Georgia Community College, where the 6-foot-8 Terrell had come without a high school diploma to earn his G.E.D. St. Bonaventure's compliance director, Barbara Hick, studied his transcript. No chance, she told the coach. The A.D., examined it. No way.

To hell with them, van Breda Kolff busted past to the president's office. The coach told the president he had to have Terrell. Whatever it took, they needed a center. So, Wickenheiser cheated. He broke the rules. There was no gray area of interpretation as he calls it, no honest mistake. This was malicious. This was calculated. Around America, universities and athletic departments need to see: This is unforgivable.

Considering several schools trying to recruit Terrell were told by his JUCO coach that they could never get Terrell eligible, it was just a matter of time until they were turned into the NCAA. They made it 25 games with him. St. Bonaventure officials were so arrogant, so corrupt -- so stupid -- the president and basketball coach believed they could get away with it.

In the end, this was the office of the president, cutting to the core of the university's credibility and this is the reason the NCAA is obligated to treat St. Bonaventure like the lowest of its lawless offenders. It's going to be a long, long time before this basketball program -- even this university -- recovers.

The Atlantic 10 doesn't blame the players for forfeiting those final two games. They get it. They blame the grown ups. They did this. Everyone is getting a good laugh out of calling these kids quitters, ridiculing Terrell, who was exploited and embarrassed by a university and president still with the utter arrogance to say, "My own involvement in the original decision to accept Jamil was founded on my desire to help him."

This isn't a story of kids quitting on the season, but the grown ups quitting on them. They were hired to be educators, but turned out to be executioners of a university's integrity. It's horrible those Bonnies never made the trip to UMass for Wednesday night's game. What's worse, the president still had an office on his trip back from California, the coach still his whistle on Wednesday. The Board of Trustees meets in two weeks. If Wickenheiser and van Breda Kolff are still standing when this is over, it isn't just the rest of the season St. Bonaventure should shut down, but the school itself.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNwoj@aol.com.