The NCAA doesn’t need Condi Rice to make changes.

The newest body that will save college basketball, the so-called Rice Commission, will find out what it takes to clean up what they think is a mess, and that the engine driving the money train is college football far more than the round ball sport.

If college basketball is corrupt because North Carolina “lawyered up” to defend itself against easy classes or Louisville hired some strippers to entertain recruits, then Rice is scratching the surface of what is wrong with college athletics.

College basketball is a petting zoo compared to the millions made by the Alabama’s and other big dogs of college football, where there are so many more players and so much more money protecting that sport than basketball.

The farce of the new commission is the same farce that has been going on for decades. As coaching salaries sky rocket and the facilities arms race continues, the agents of change aren’t in Indianapolis or in big names hired by the NCAA to do it. Whatever changes they advocate must be passed into law by NCAA rules committees made up of athletic administrators.

If college football and basketball coaches makes three times what their athletic directors and presidents make, who has the power to get those salaries in line, or even pay the athletes more than cost of attendance? If college administrators vote for significant changes, their schools are going to net out less money and fail to balance the budgets that went out of control long ago.

Pass a rule that says Nick Saban can only make two million dollars a year, instead of ten, and say goodbye to Nick Saban — who will be in the NFL before the sun sets, causing riots in Tuscaloosa. College athletics is trapped in its own game, and the schools can’t stop the madness without turning everything upside down.

That would be okay, if they were all required to do it. But those changes are not made across the board because the schools won’t vote for NCAA rules that will cost them dearly. That’s the case on all levels.

HBO’s Real Sports has a current piece running on how the NCAA has left schools to deal with mistreated or abused athletes. One obviously injured football player died after he was ordered back into a game. And a track athlete was so abused she wound up in the psyche ward with suicidal thoughts. The athletes’ families didn’t have the means to sue. The schools denied culpability — to save money.