Great moments in education

So.

You’re Jordan Spriggs, an Auburn football player not exactly into academics (hard to believe, I know, but play along).

You have an assignment coming up that you’d just as soon not complete — hey, who wants anything cutting into their Xbox time? You obviously need to procure schoolwork from another source.

Do you:

a) Request a little academic ... uh, help from a low-level football assistant;

b) Ask another scholar-athlete at Auburn where he gets his papers?

c) Tweet, “Who is good at writing papers? I pay”?

If you’re actually Jordan Spriggs, you actually Tweet, “Who is good at writing papers? I pay”?

Mr. Spriggs, NCAA for you on line one …

But wait, there’s more

Meanwhile, also this week, NCAA investigators traveled to Thibodaux, La., to meet with Auburn recruit Greg Robinson, Robinson’s mother Lydia, Robinson associate Sean Nelson and Robinson’s former Thibodaux High School coach, Dennis Lorio.

According to Sports by Brooks, the NCAA, following up on an investigative piece by Thayer Evans at FOXSports.com, is most interested “about the role Nelson played in the recruitment of both players and the nature of Nelson’s relationship with the Auburn coaching staff.”

Considering the NCAA is still looking at the recruitment of Cam Newton, perhaps the organization should just go ahead and open a satellite office in eastern Alabama.

If it’s not an alcohol problem, it will do till one comes along

Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, spring training 2010, to reporters: “You guys write in the paper ‘alcoholic.’ That's not right. I don't know how to explain, but it's not an alcohol problem.”

Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera, spring training 2011, to police: “Do you know who I am?” before being arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and resisting an officer without violence.

According to St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office, Cabrera refused to take a breathalyzer test during the early Wednesday incident. On the other hand, he reportedly took a swig from a bottle of scotch as a deputy watched.

You have to admit, though, for someone in the process of completely messing up his career, Cabrera sure takes a happy mug shot.

Friday column: For a con man, one hell of a question

As I read the latest accusations against Art Schlichter — a swindler whose latest alleged con is said to have led a 68-year-old widow to the brink of suicide — I find myself wondering what particular area of hell is appropriate for the former Ohio State quarterback.

In The Inferno, Dante reserves the eighth circle of perdition for practitioners of various types of fraud. Those guilty of theft — of stealing other people’s substance in life — are not only bitten by snakes, they find that the bites cost them their humanity.

They are transformed into serpents.

Reptilian is as good a word as any to describe Schlichter’s character in the here-and-now.

To feed his longstanding gambling addiction, the 50-year-old former jock — whom a prosecutor called “the best con man I’ve ever seen” — has committed more than 20 felonies, stealing an estimated $1.5 million from both friends and strangers.

That doesn’t include the $1 million Schlichter is formally charged with stealing from Anita Barney, who befriended Schlichter after his latest release from prison when he spoke at a church to peddle both his book and his tale of contrition.

“I listened to his story in church, and I felt sad for him,” Barney told the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “I read his book and thought he was serious about helping people. I was a Christian, and I felt sorry for him.”

Sorry enough to loan Schlichter $100,000. Not only did he not pay her back but, according to Barney, he soon pressured her into giving him more money. Then, when her funds ran low, she says, he intimidated her into asking friends for “loans” under various pretexts. Many friends gave her money, which reportedly went to Schlichter.

Former friends suing her, her life in chaos, a distraught Barney drove to her husband’s grave with a loaded handgun. A call from her son — “That guy is not worth killing yourself over, Mom” — kept her from pulling the trigger, according to the Dispatch.

Which brings us back to hell — and another question.

Edward T. Oakes, an expert on the controversial theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, defended Balthasar’s provocative idea that sinners in hell might still have a repentant encounter with God and thus be saved. But Oakes wrote that in assessing that notion, one must consider the accumulation of sin in a person’s lifetime — he uses Hitler as an example — acting like a force at death “so that one is hurled, so to speak, into defiance” — even in the face of an encounter with the Almighty.

If I understand Oakes, he’s saying Balthasar’s theology may leave open the possibility of a sinner exiting hell, but the way a particular person lives his or her life could make such an exit very unlikely, nearly impossible.

Which sounds to me like an interesting long-shot gamble, action that would attract the interest of a certain former quarterback seemingly headed back to prison.

Schlichter being Schlichter, if he could lay a wager on the fate of his own soul in hell, I have no doubt that he would.

But which way, I wonder, would he bet?

Friday column: Brewing up a little wisdom

So.

Lindsay Lohan just borrowed a $2,500 necklace.

Well, sure; why not? After all, the rich are different from you and me. And the celebrity rich? They’re in a completely different universe. So a swank store allowing a celeb to prance out the door with such an ornament is not beyond the realm …

Therefore, I’m with the defense. Up to a point. And that point is reached when an anonymous member of Lohan’s entourage says the following:

“Lindsay doesn’t understand how the store can file a police report when they let her borrow the necklace. She’s used to getting gifted items that are worth way more than that. And why would (Lindsay) steal a necklace? She has tons of jewelry and doesn’t need anymore.”

Why would she steal a necklace?

Has the source forgotten the subject in question? Anyone who can pose a question beginning with the words, “Why would Lindsay … ” is detached from reality.

Seemingly, one might more profitably ask, “Why would a 46-year-old congressman with a wife and a young son and, presumably, a political future try to pass himself off as a divorced, 39-year-old lobbyist — and e-mail a photo of his flexing, shirtless self to a woman he met on Craigslist?”

That’s a question now-former Rep. Christopher Lee, R-NY, will be asking himself for — oh, let me see — the rest of his life. As will his family. As will anyone who voted for him. As will many who did not.

(Quick aside: As we learned in the Brett Favre fiasco, texting photos of your naked self is generally not a good idea.)

Frankly, I doubt the congressman or anybody else will arrive at a definitive and edifying answer.

But if anyone does, that person might move on to the question of why Albert Haynesworth in his Ford F-150 pickup last week allegedly felt the need to chase down a man in a 1994 Honda, get him to roll down his window, then punch him in the nose.

Haynesworth, it would seem, has little reason to be angry with the world, let alone a poor schlub in an aging Civic who may have cut him off. After all, in two years in Washington, the pouty Haynesworth has played like a dog but still collected about $500,000 per tackle, thanks to an embarrassingly hefty contract.

Of course, one might also ask why Haynesworth, upon signing a $100 million deal with the Washington Redskins, would suddenly turn into a complete jerk?

(Ha ha — trick question: Haynesworth was a jerk way before he inked that 2009 contract.)

Seeking a clue to mankind’s inexplicable nature (and looking for a way to end this column), I did a Web search for quotes on human behavior.

After plodding through the wisdom of the ages, I found myself preferring the simple sagacity of a 1990 beer ad:

Why ask why?

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Friday column: Even the gullible will think twice about these

Thank God for the credulous.

You know, the folks who believe our president wasn’t born in America, the moon landing was faked, and certain powerful lizard humans secretly run the world (oh, they’re out there, people).

If it weren’t for the credulous, who could O.J. Mayo possibly be talking to?

Mayo, guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, recently was suspended by the NBA for 10 games after testing positive for the steroid DHEA. He immediately went to what is usually Plan A in such situations — blaming the test result on something he inadvertently ingested.

In this case, Mayo put the onus on an unnamed energy drink, thereby showing a distinct lack of imagination. (Cyclist Alberto Contador blamed tainted meat; sprinter Ben Johnson, spiked ginseng; distance runner Dieter Baumann, nandalone toothpaste.)

As for his trustworthiness, this is the same Mayo who denied receiving cash and other goodies at Southern Cal even though the school — in the wake of its investigation — vacated all of its wins for the season Mayo was a Trojan and surrendered $206,200 in NCAA Tournament money.

I wouldn’t say Mayo and truth are strangers; let’s just say they’re not exactly roommates.

Sometimes, sports figures don’t talk to the credulous — they are the credulous.

Take Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon and team president Jeff Katz, who for years believed that Bernie Madoff produced 18 percent returns on their investments because, in their words, “he was smarter than everyone else.”

They believed that until the day the Ponzi scheme purveyor was hauled off to jail.

That belief — which, to be fair, no small number of investors shared — has resulted in financial instability for the New York franchise, leading to the Mets having to seek minority partners to ease their budget woes.

This might prove a difficult sell, even to their fellow credulous: “The ship is sinking — hop aboard!”

For another tough sell, I give you the words of Harvey Bruner, lawyer of record for one Chris Carter, a top Ohio State football recruit and a recent guest of the Cleveland City Jail.

Carter, 18, was arrested Tuesday and charged on suspicion of fondling as many eight high school girls while pretending to measure them for JROTC uniforms. One of the alleged victims is 15.

According to news reports, Carter not only admitted his guilt to police, he gave them the book he used to record the measurements.

Yet after his first visit with Carter, Bruner declared him to be a “fine, young man” who is innocent of any wrongdoing.

To the credulous, I would point out that in Bruner’s trade — criminal-defense attorney — an “innocent person” and “paying client” are synonymous.

Considering Carter’s admission and the “measurement book,” it will be interesting to see what defense Bruner employs for the “fine, young man.” I suspect it will have something to do with a conspiracy of the lizard humans.

(Oh, they’re out there, people).