What 'integrity,' Mr. Adams?

University of Georgia President Michael Adams suddenly is embarrassed by the most recent scandal involving basketball coach Jim Harrick and former player Tony Cole.

In the larger scheme of things, the scandal du jour sounds pretty mundane, just garden-variety allegations about who paid Cole's phone bill and helped him pass pithy courses like: "Coaching You, by your coach, Jim." But it's the kind of scandal that will get the NCAA's attention. Down the road, it could cost the Dawgs some basketball scholarships or even bar the team from playing in a tournament or two.

So, Adams suddenly is behaving as if UGA's honor is at stake. He's running around like the scales just fell from his eyes, revealing the baggage Tony Cole and Jim Harrick brought with them from a string of other schools. All of a sudden, Cole's emotional blowouts, questionable academic record and sexual improprieties are weighing heavily on the president's mind.

But where were Adams' concerns when he recruited Harrick, a coach with a spotty ethical record, to UGA? Where were they when he waived the university's nepotism rules to let Harrick's son coach with his dad? Where were they when he let Cole into UGA despite a late application and a history of trouble?

More importantly, where was Adams last school year, when a student alleged being gang raped by two other athletes in Cole's dorm room?

At the time, I tried to find out. But Adams ducked any comment on that earlier incident. He didn't use one iota of his authority to keep the campus safe for the girl who reported being attacked. He simply disappeared from view.

Harrick was different. At first, he used his access to the media to disparage the young woman. "It doesn't happen, and it didn't happen," he hollered on TV. Let me say here that I have some authority to talk about being raped and about watching your chances for justice dribble away. So, I wanted to hate Jim Harrick.

I wanted to hate him because here's this guy with his own TV show taking on a vulnerable young woman who doesn't dare show her face. Here's the guy with the biggest hall pass and the no-stick surface lashing out at a woman who's trying to hang on to what's left of her privacy after reporting a rape.

But I couldn't hate him. For one thing, he's such a true believer. He's the kind of coach who pulls kids like Tony Cole off the streets and forgives their indiscretions because he thinks he's helping them.

For another, unlike Adams, he was facing the issue. Harrick called me back and said he was troubled by the allegations. He asked me to come to Athens and speak to the football and basketball teams about being a rape victim.

Coach Harrick met my friend and me in his palatial office, and took us to the athletes' dining hall. There, we tried to find some common ground on this rape/not rape thing. I couldn't help being drawn in by the way Harrick talked about his players -- he loves them and loves to win, maybe in that order.

But inside that rarified bubble of big-college athletics, some pretty abnormal attitudes pass for mundane facts. Casually, over plates of barbecue, Harrick opined that some of the sticky situations his players encounter are caused by young black women (yes, he said that) who want to get pregnant with future NBAers. Other stickiness, he added, occurs when women hang out in hotels to entrap athletes. In Harrick's worldview, women prey on innocent players, and innocent players are victimized by them.

There wasn't much to say after that. We followed the coach to a training room, where husky football and gigantic basketball players squished together in a lecture hall designed to seat normal-sized human beings. The boys were polite: half-bored, half-cringing. Looking out at them, I realized they were just kids. I also realized I was talking about rape to the wrong people.

I should have been addressing everyone who handed Tony Cole a basketball instead of getting him real help. I should have had the nerve to tell Jim Harrick what I thought about his attitudes toward rape victims. I should have been addressing Michael Adams and every sports booster and trustee who created this insane environment, just so they can re-live the glory of their youth a couple times a year.

I should have gone looking for a grown-up, because that stadium really needed one. But, honestly, I didn't know where to start.