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When news of Derrick Rose’s sham SAT scores hit, I ho-hummed my way through the headlines without much thought. No need to get all huffy-I really couldn’t care less.

Memphis recruited Derrick Rose because he’s right for selling jerseys and a gain at the gate. Derrick Rose chose Memphis as an impressive backdrop for his NBA audition. Everyone came out ahead. No serious-minded onlooker imagined that sincere academic pursuit was part of the equation-I doubt that anyone close to the situation, within either camp, expected Rose to last longer than a season or two with the Tigers. So why does the NCAA care? They’re not dummies. They know the score.

The NCAA’s interest in these things is no different than that of Rose and Memphis. They’re in it for the cash. But for the NCAA that means keeping up appearances. Henry Abbot summed it up nicely:

NOBODY in the NBA cares about his SATs, right? So why’s it such a big deal to the NCAA? By any objective measure his college experience was a success, in terms of preparing him to become a successful professional athlete. But the NCAA, of course, has to maintain the illusion that he was actually a serious student, and for that, SATs matter.

The NCAA’s modus operandi of appearance-keeping is to parade their policies before the press-it’s a classic form of Pharisaical misdirection. The outside of the cup, and all that. They point away to distract from what’s within.

Or maybe it’s just a failure of their public relations machine and they really do care about academics and only appear to fake it. I’ll leave that to your discretion.

I’m writing here with a simple observation. The San Antonio Spurs are arguably the best run organization in sports. Amongst their distinguished accomplishments is the expectation that their players conduct themselves in a classy, virtuous manner. And despite all the talk of happy locker rooms, good citizenship and community involvement, I’m hard-pressed to recall a single reference to team policy.

In other words, the team doesn’t rely on curfews, dress codes or iPod policies to keep its players in line. And they certainly don’t point to those things to convince us they’re a swell group of guys.

The Spurs behave themselves, but no one would describe them as precious. Let’s not fool ourselves. They’ve known an occasional indiscretion. But the culture around the Spurs is not one of ostentatious display. They’re not going for the illusion of character; they aim for the real thing, however imperfect.

Yet more curious is Gregg Popovich’s consistent desire to extend a benevolent hand to coaches on the disciplinary rebound. This is not quite the case with P.J. Carlesimo, but when the Spurs hired him he was certainly a coach out of favor. Pop later recruited Kelvin Sampson, fresh off a forced resignation at Indiana, to serve in an ambiguous advisory role with the team. Sampson’s stay was short, but it played out like a long group hug. And of course the Spurs entrusted the Austin Toros to the hands of Quin Snyder, finding it within themselves to look past his dalliance with collegiate scandal. Since his hire, Snyder has been an overwhelming success in Austin.

There is a lesson in all this, and you shouldn’t have to look very hard.