By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

Just who is running college athletics these days, anyway?

Given the growing list of recent head-scratching moves, you have to wonder who is calling the shots at the Division I asylum and where the college presidents have been while the inmates were passing the keys around.

First, a group of basketball players at St. Bonaventure, miffed over sanctions meted out by their conference, refused to finish the rest of the schedule.

Next, some disgruntled freshman basketball players shoved their coach, Matt Doherty, out the door as the basketball coach at the University of North Carolina.

Then, Roy Williams, the basketball coach at Kansas — now, maybe for good — springs the trap door on the man who was ostensibly his boss, athletic director Al Bohl.

If there was any doubt that the tail is too often wagging the dog these days, you only need examine the events of the past month.

As UNC alum Michael Jordan put it: "Kids get yelled at. I was yelled at, and there were times when I probably felt like I wanted to go home. But I'm a firm believer that an 18-year-old kid shouldn't be able to determine a coach's future."

And, by extension, you have to wonder how a coach, even one as accomplished as Williams, should be allowed to call the shots in the school's administration.

For while Williams didn't officially hand Bohl his walking papers yesterday, the fingerprints were surely there. And Bohl said as much, leaving with an eloquence not often heard in these matters, saying: "He (Williams) held me in his hand like a dove. He could have either choose to let me fly or crush me, and he chose to crush me."

Much of the irony here is that when Bohl, who never should have gotten the KU job in the first place, finally got fired from an AD position, it wasn't for the big ticket items that should have brought his departure, but for stepping on the wrong toes.

Prior to landing at Kansas, Bohl was the AD at Fresno State, where he also served as Jerry Tarkanian's lap dog during the period that landed the Bulldogs in hot water with the NCAA and cost them their basketball postseason.

At KU, Bohl merely ruffled the feathers of Williams and, by extension, all who worshipped at the basketball coach's feet. And because Doherty was forced out at UNC, giving Williams the leverage of returning to the Tar Heels, the Kansas coach was able to make Bohl disappear merely by making his wishes known.

Who said college basketball's madness had to end in March?