Is it time for Duke and Coach K to -- gasp -- part ways? Exactly what happened at 610 Buchanan St. in Durham will continue to be debated over these next months. But one larger lesson of the Duke lacrosse scandal is to underline the fundamental, irreconcilable contradiction between big-time college athletics and what should be the true mission of any university, namely the pursuit of knowledge and learning.

Sports have assumed a grotesquely gigantic, high-stakes, big-business role in university life. Competing at the Division I level drains so much time and energy that athletes cannot do their best in the classroom, much less have anything like a well-rounded, broadening college experience.

Isn't it a sign that something's out of kilter when a great university like Duke is known before anything else for its basketball team? And its highest-paid employee is the basketball coach and not a Nobel Prize-winning doctor, a world-renowned literature professor and novelist, or even the university president?

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As a Duke professor, I've taught dozens of athletes, from famous men's basketball stars to champion female golfers and field hockey players. What strikes me is the extraordinary demand that competing at the Division I level makes of these young men and women. Even "minor" sports require three hours a day or more of practice, film study and conditioning.

Coaches think nothing of scheduling as many as four or five trips a semester for tournaments as far away as Mexico, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Their players miss days and days of class, return exhausted and hopelessly behind in their courses, and very seldom have time for going to lectures or performances, acting in plays or musicals, pursuing independent research interests, study abroad, community involvement or the any of the rest of a meaningful college experience.

Unlike at least some of the men's lacrosse players, most Duke athletes are smart, delightful and hard-working. That makes it all the worse that they must become athlete-students and not, as official happy talk would have us believe, student-athletes. Athletes at Duke spend far more time with their coaches than any professor, supposedly their main mentors.

As heretical as it may sound, I think the cult of basketball at Duke is a major liability. A university should not be attracting students by virtue of their interest in spending long hours camping out for tickets and screaming regimented game rally chants. Nor should it be giving students scholarships just because they can throw a ball fast or jump high; the real criteria should financial need and talent in their studies, the arts, volunteering to help others and other pursuits. The fiasco of the lacrosse team shows how the culture of big-time sports can sometimes also link up to a sense of entitlement, a jockish beer-bust mentality and a parochial team in-bredness that can breed loutish behavior.

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Does all of this sound extreme? It's actually the extraordinary power and visibility of American college sports that's the peculiar, globally unprecedented phenomenon. Nowhere else in the world do university teams appear on television, players become celebrities, or coaches earn millions of dollars. Universities are just that in Europe, Africa and Latin America; strange as it may seem, they prioritize education while staying out of the high-stakes, multi-billion dollar business of sports with its giant ticket sales, apparel revenue and coaches touting cars and credit card companies on national television. Students come to college to learn and study. Top athletes go into professional leagues.

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