Recruits from all over

HERE, there, everywhere, Division I colleges are losing money along with their missions and minds for what? To win ballgames.

The University of the Pacific, in Stockton, Calif., heavily recruits from across the Atlantic. Its current field hockey team includes eight women from South Africa, two from Belgium, one each from Spain and Holland. Whatever it takes!

Same with tennis. Current male recruits are from Zimbabwe, Egypt, Armenia, Spain, Brazil and England. (Two are from the United States.) Female recruits are from Holland, Israel, Romania, Ecuador and Spain.

Pacific last year exceeded its athletic budget by $4 million. Its men’s basketball program was sanctioned and fined by the NCAA for illegal recruiting, academic fraud and providing investigators with false information.

Tuition to the private college this year was raised 4 percent to $48,000 per student — not including housing and food. It’s crazy. But winning ballgames remains many colleges’ highest, most expensive and most shameless priority.

Craig Carton keeps insisting he’s innocent. Fine.

That would mean there were no victims of his ticket brokering, and no malfeasance in servicing an alleged $500,000 or more gambling debt — or, at the very least, he dealt up front and fairly with business customers and/or investors. That’s to be determined.

But how — given his radio schedule, side-gigs and personal appearances — did he find time to enter the marked-up ticket resales business, and why? And why, given his prominent public position and eagerness toward selfpromotion, did he keep his honest involvement in an honest entertainment business quiet until he was arrested?

As for another WFAN AllStar, Mike Francesa, after his deluded declaration last week that post-WFAN he’ll continue to “release” his NFL picks because “they have value,” he went 1-2, including his career specialty: touting a big home favorite, this time Seattle giving seven to Washington, that lost the game, outright.