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You know how every now and again someone writes a great article about how disgusting college recruiting is in basketball? And about how a lot of the top amateur basketball players are not amateur at all?

It can be tempting, I think, to have a short memory, and to say that these things are born of this or that recent trend. People like to blame a certain person, for instance.

But this problem is bigger and older than that. I recently became aware of the excellent sportswriting of Hal Lebovitz. He wrote an article for the Cleveland Plain Dealer called "Will the Cheating Ever Stop?" (It's republished in his book "The Best of Hal Lebovitz," some of which you can read in PDF form.) It's about this exact topic, and here are four short excerpts, just to give you the flavor of the thing:

• Pete Newell, who once coached the University of California to the national championship and finally got out of the college rat race because recruiting became odious to him, says, "Schools don't ask if a coach is a decent, moral man. They ask, 'Can he recruit? Can he sell?'"
• [Wayne] Embry, you may remember, was a poor Ohio farm boy who played for Miami (O.) University, then with the Cincinnati Royals, appearing here many times at the Arena. He became an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks and is now a highly successful fast food chain executive and still does scouting for the Bucks. He remembers when he was heavily recruited back in 1955. He was almost giddy about the thought of going to Ohio State. He felt a magic about the books and the brilliant professors. It all vanished the night he was the dinner guest of a top state official. Embry was told he could study three times a week in that official's office and receive $90 a week in salary -- big money in 1955 -- just for studying. At that moment, he knew that, for him, there was something terribly wrong with Ohio State.
• "The boy must come out of college with a means to earn a livelihood. He must have his degree in something he can use. And he's got to play for that from the first day he listens to a recruiter. He should use the opportunity his talents provide. If the school also uses him, at least it's a fair exchange."
• I especially like the way Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, puts it: "A decade after graduation, almost everyone will have forgotten where and what they played. But every time they speak, everyone will know whether or not they are educated."

Here's the thing, though. Lebovitz wrote this twenty-five years ago. Over the last quarter century, the NCAA and its member universities have surely made a lot of money. But I don't think you can make the case that they have made any serious headway when it comes to cleaning up the recruiting game, or making it serve students any better.