Rick Neuheisel promises to play the rosy-cheeked, guitar-strumming aw-shucks fool one more time, fighting to save a job that he should've lost a long time ago. The Teflon football coach blatantly broke NCAA rules, betraying his past and present employers, the University of Colorado and Washington. He lied to UW officials over a clandestine interview with the San Francisco 49ers.

	What was Rick Neuheisel thinking when he plunked down $5,000 on a college hoops pool?

Finally, Neuheisel made the ultimate move for self-destruction, a $20,000 payday in an NCAA Tournament basketball pool that promises to be his professional Waterloo.

"I believe I am completely innocent," Neuheisel told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The rest of us believe he is completely shameless. If this had been a scholarship football player investing $5,000 in a dormitory pool, his room, books, board and playbook would've been stripped so fast, the kid's head would be spinning. Other schools wouldn't touch him on a transfer. The pros would proceed with caution on drafting him. Who would dare even debate the issue?

So now, Neuheisel is the easiest call in college coaching corruption this year, the resolution far clearer with him than it even was with Alabama's Mike Price and Iowa State's Larry Eustachy: Get your guitar, Rick. And get out.

The NCAA spends so much time warning colleges on gambling, promising that it'll be merciless with cases concerning administrators and coaches. After all, they're supposed to know better, right? They're supposed to set the standard.

As usual, Neuheisel believed he was above obeying the rules. Betting $5,000 in a college basketball pool? The arrogance of these multi-million-dollar coaches is unparalleled. They believe they run these universities. They believe they're untouchable, that the discipline they demand out of their own players doesn't apply to them. Why wouldn't they? As long as they're winning, it's true.

All this was happening at Washington, just as college football was enduring the embarrassment of the gambling trial for ex-Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson in Tallahassee. Gambling is the great untold story of college sports, the sleeping giant of scandals. So much is bubbling under the surface, threatening to explode.

College coaches crusade for the end of legalized sports betting in America, such as UConn's Jim Calhoun and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski. They've pushed policy to politicians, with Calhoun even traveling to testify in Washington, D.C. All of which would be wonderful and noble pursuits, if these same coaches didn't headline well-paying basketball clinics at the Mohegan Sun, a casino in Connecticut.

For Calhoun, he's even used the casino as the site for his charity golf tournament. While the practice is probably harmless, the appearance creates confusing, mixed messages. These are just regrettable conflicts with the basketball coaches, but what has happened with Neuheisel is unpardonable.

Ultimately, this is a fitting end to his tenure of embarrassment at Washington, where he cheated and lied his way to the unemployment line. Around America, this should be remembered as the spring of scaring college coaches straight. From Price to Eustachy to Neuheisel, these million-dollar-a-year coaching CEO's are covering the bases on every vice known to man: Sex, booze and gambling. The party's over. Despite what the deposed coaches spin for the purposes of self-preservation, the best lessons learned on campus are that the abuse of power and privilege come with consequences.

From lap dances to drunken frat house follies to $20,000 hanging on a freshman's free throw at a basketball regional, these self-proclaimed molders of men are responsible for satisfying something bigger than their own indulgences. They're responsible to be role models. In the morals clauses of the contracts they signed, in the living rooms of the kids they recruited, they signed up for the duty.

Unlike Price and Eustachy, there will be little hand-wringing over his firing. Once NCAA president Myles Brand hit the pages of USA Today on Friday morning, insisting that he would find the basketball pool "incompatible with future employment," even his athletic director and apologists in Seattle can't save Strummin' Rick now.

Somehow, Neuheisel promised to fight his dismissal. Somehow, he still doesn't get it. Why would he? Every embarrassment and ethical breech he's delivered on this job, he's hustled his way out of. As much as anything, this is the University of Washington's fault. Huskies athletic director Barbara Hedges never did her homework hiring Neuheisel. She let him embarrass the school, over and over. In many ways, the university gambled a lot more with its credibility than the coach ever did with his neighborhood basketball pool.

It won't be long until the football coach has lost his job at the University of Washington, but before then, Hedges promised a "careful review of all the facts," according to the Seattle Times.

When it comes to Rick Neuheisel gambling with her school's good name, she's a little late, isn't she?

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