It seems that off-the-field problems get worse for college athletics each offseason, and now the coaches have joined in. It's sad. Rick Neuheisel, Mike Price, Larry Eustachy and others have to know the rules and they have to obey them.

	A long list of past transgressions has finally caught up to Rick Neuheisel.

The NCAA produces booklets and public-service announcements galore to get the message across to everyone that gambling is not okay. There is no way a head football coach like Neuheisel would or should get away with betting $5,000 on the NCAA basketball tournament, no matter how innocent it may seem to him or others.

I like Rick Neuheisel. He is a very good coach and a great recruiter, and he is an asset to college football in that regard. He is a bright guy who has a law degree.

But at what point are coaches at every level going to realize that they are role models? There will be a lot of people saying "C'mon, plenty of people throw in a few bucks on tourney pools", but they are missing the point.

The University of Washington is not making an example of Rick Neuheisel. We simply cannot have a million-dollar coach at a major educational institution admitting gambling and saying he thought it was no big deal -- even if he was among friends and thinks the amount of money was insignificant.

If the NCAA wants to avoid other situations like the one involving former Florida State starting quarterback Adrian McPherson -- who went on trial for allegedly betting on his own team last season -- the public faces of universities cannot be confessing to gambling on college sports.

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But the fact of the matter is that Rick Neuheisel was not fired because of this one incident. He has a past with the NCAA and his dismissal is a result of accumulated transgressions.

Colorado paid a price for improprieties committed during Neuheisel's tenure there, and he had has problems at Washington surrounding recruiting violations and his flirtation with the San Francisco 49ers. Athletic director Barbara Hedges has obviously had enough. The gambling was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Rick Neuheisel will coach somewhere else, probably as an offensive coordinator and eventually a head coach in the NFL, so the people who will suffer the most are the student-athletes at Washington. Star players like Cody Pickett and Reggie Williams were looking forward to challenging for the Pac-10 title, and now they will be asked to deal with a major distraction.

There will be all kinds of speculation about who the next coach will be for the Huskies. You can bet that a university which expects success will look for someone with a proven track record. Neuheisel convinced great players to come to Washington, and his successor will have to be able to do the same. The Huskies will get a great coach, though, because Washington is one of the premier programs in the country.

Whether or not one feels an NCAA pool among friends is no big deal, Neuheisel and other coaches are in positions of authority that holds them to a different set of rules.

He and his football-coaching brethren are entrusted with the lives of about 100 young men who look up to them. While they cannot be expected to be perfect, the hope is that they live their lives in a manner that sets a proper example. Because without integrity, the wins and losses mean nothing.

Trev Alberts is a college football analyst for ESPN and contributes a weekly column to ESPN.com during the season.