Charles Barkley can pontificate until the end of the earth?or until he can look at his toes without his gut obscuring the view, whichever comes first?that sports figures are not and should not be role models, and it won’t change the reality that, for right or wrong, youngsters do and always will look up to them.

In fact, it’s no less true even when said youngsters happen to occupy the 18-to-24 age demographic and have scholarships to play ball on the collegiate level.

Indeed, as many of these athletes venture from their homes, often for the first time, to play sports, just as often on the opposite side of the country, the role of the university coach inherently moves beyond mere instructor and motivator, and into a role of a familial figurehead and ad hoc guidance counselor.

What happens, though, when the alleged adult is more juvenile and immature than his or her charges?

If only Bob Knight and Rick Pitino would momentarily refrain from their narcissistic self-adulation to give the idea even the slightest smidgeon of thought?

Well then, they might actually move beyond their existing status as mere talented basketball minds and begin to approach their true callings as mentors.

If I held my breath waiting for that to actually happen, though, my face would be almost blue enough to resemble Christina Aguilera with half her daily dose of whore makeup.

For Knight, it’s an exercise in futility in getting him to recognize the hypocrisy of professing to possess the ability to turn boys into men, and to then display equal adeptness in throwing chairs onto courts and Puerto Rican police officers into garbage cans, to assault with equal ease the player not making progress and the student with enough audacity to fail to address His Worshipfulness as “Mr. Knight” or “Coach Knight” or “Sir Knight,” let alone as “Basketball Genius, Heavenly Deity and Oughta-Be GQ Cover Model Knight.”

That being said, I suppose it is a bit too much to ask that he realize what a bad message it sends to back out of a charity book-signing event that would raise money for a public library, just because the function was to be co sponsored by the newspaper that recently ran a front-page expos detailing the fraudulent, nepotist business practices of his eldest son, Tim?an action which will therefore diminish by a significant margin the number of potential donors in attendance?because the event no longer carries with it the same allure without good ol’ “Coach Knight, Sir”?which will, in turn, diminish by a significant margin the charitable funds the library will bring in.

Did you get that?

Instead of teaching his players that criticism is part of life, and a character-building one at that, he told them it’s better to get the last word in, even if it hurts innocent people depending on you in the process.

So yeah, it’s a bit too late for Bobby to be a decent human being, let alone a decent role model (though not too late, I suppose, for him to track me down and choke me silly for my irreverence).

I still hold out hope for Pitino, though, in spite of his recent folly, in which he removed his Louisville team from scheduled competition against UNLV for the second consecutive year just to avoid the negative press that surely would have found its way into the Vegas papers in the days leading up to the game because, after his dismissal from the NBA’s Boston Celtics, he manipulated Nevada-Las Vegas’ administration into helping him drive up his eventual salary with the Cardinals by his coy suggestions to the folks in Kentucky that he was seriously ready to accept the offer to coach in Sin City.

Instead of teaching his players that owning up to mistakes and taking the requisite lumps that accompany them is an opportunity for personal growth and maturation, he sent the message that it’s better to hold on to a fractured, false image of yourself as infallible, even if it costs your school $50,000 to back out of a home-and-home contract.

Maybe sports figures aren’t role models?certainly, most aren’t choir boys?but then, as good ol’ Chuck Barkley also once said, “Nobody’s perfect?but unless you try to be, you won’t even come close.”

Eric welcomes feedback at: [email protected].