HOLD OFF ON HALL INDUCTIONS

Cases show active coaches’ legacies subject to change

Here’s a list of the active Basketball Hall of Fame coaches in college men’s basketball: Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, SMU’s Larry Brown, North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Louisville’s Rick Pitino and Kentucky’s John Calipari.

Here’s the list of active Hall of Fame coaches under NCAA sanctions, which require that they miss nine games this upcoming season: Boeheim and Brown.

Here’s the list of active Hall of Fame coaches awaiting the results of an NCAA investigation into schoolwide academic impropriety: Williams.

He’s no longer active, but let’s not forget Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, who landed his program a postseason ban on his way out a few years ago, too.

So ... maybe the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame needs to rethink its qualifications. No other major sport ( except golf ) allows active players or coaches to be inducted into its hall of fame.

The reasoning is simple: Your career is not complete. Neither is your legacy. And clearly, as we’re seeing in recent years, a lot can happen as a coach enters his twilight.

Brown is now 3- for- 3 on NCAA sanctions; he’d previously landed UCLA and Kansas basketball in trouble under his watch. Boeheim’s charges show that there were academic impropriety, poor drug testing/ reporting and impermissible benefits under his watch.

The Hall of Fame did not respond to an inquiry from USA TODAY Sports asking if these penalties would persuade it to reconsider its election process. All of this is ugly. Though college athletics is in- creasingly driven by insane amounts of money, it is, at the heart of it, supposed to be about student- athletes — emphasis on the student part. Academic impropriety and/ or fraud, which were allegedly present at SMU and Syracuse ( and are being investigated at UNC), are perhaps the worst kind of NCAA violation.

CHARLES LECLAIRE, USA TODAY SPORTS Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim will miss nine games this season because of NCAA sanctions.