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Jim Grobe is dressed in a worn gray sweat shirt, talking to his old football coach, Sonny Randle. The two of them look out across the practice field at Wake Forest like a picture, frozen in time.

They might as well be back at old Virginia in a simpler day and age, when college football was run by men with character, when the schools cared more about education than glory, back before the game got too big for its britches.

College football is broken now, and the people who broke it are going to have to fix it. Can they be trusted to do it? Or are they the problem?

Teams across the country are in spring practice now, an annual ritual that once played out on quiet corners of quiet campuses nearing the end of the academic year. That's no longer the case. A scrimmage at the University of Texas last week was on ESPN.

Presumably, people watched it. It's likely that a lot of people were watching for the other reasons. NCAA investigators are back in business in college football. Secretaries of state have been called in. The federal government is watching.

The prevailing thought is that college football has finally messed itself up so badly that big changes have to be made now. And so we watch. And wait.

Almost every day, something breaks that makes college football look bad. The ongoing situation at Ohio State hangs over everything. An NCAA investigation at North Carolina casts a shadow over the ACC. The Bowl Championship Series, the sport's money-making alliance, is teetering from its own excesses.

Agents are on the sidelines. Runners are in the classrooms. Boosters are in the pockets of the players. Coaches are lying to the media and the NCAA.

Almost every day you hear solutions. Pay the players. Institute a playoff system. Name a commissioner of college football. Make freshmen ineligible.

Here's a better solution. Just fire Jim Tressel. Just fire Butch Davis. Just send John Junker to prison and wipe the Fiesta Bowl from the face of the earth. What happened to accountability?

Grobe and his program at Wake Forest seem so far removed from it all. But Grobe admits he gets paid an awful lot of money. And in a time of economic turmoil in this country, it sometimes doesn't make any sense.

"I don't look at it through rose-colored glasses," Grobe said. "We've got some problems. But we can address them because the majority of programs, the majority of the athletes and coaches in all sports, are doing it the right way. It's just a few programs that are making the news."

In other words, we can clean this up pretty easily if we're willing to do it.

The news out of Arizona, where the top executives of the Fiesta Bowl were funneling money into political campaigns, running up strip-club tabs and throwing $30,000 birthday parties is a sign of sickness within the bowl structure. This one will take care of itself. Junker is likely facing time in the slammer. The bowl itself is facing a hearing in New Orleans in the coming weeks that might be its demise.

The other bowls are implicated, too. Last summer's Orange Bowl junket for athletics directors and conference officials, including the ACC's, is still being investigated. Who's next?

Is the solution to destroy the BCS and put in a playoff? Hardly. Just get rid of the system of excess. No more junkets. No more free trips to the Bahamas. It's a different world now.

A study by Sport Illustrated and CBS last month revealed that simple background checks of the athletes at the top 25 schools in the country revealed that 7 percent of the players had serious criminal records. It made for good headlines and fell right into the pattern of recent incidents and reports. A man in Texas was found to be running a scouting combine used by Oregon, which paid him thousands of dollars to direct players to their campus.

Auburn, Ohio State, UNC, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Southern California. The names of the schools seem to multiply. The NCAA is chasing what it can. We await what's next.

Randle said he knows what needs to come next. The old Virginia coach thinks the programs have to be hit -- and hard. Grobe thinks the troublemakers have to be dealt with.

"When you have problems, the worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand and ignore problems," he said. "Most coaches still feel like education is important, and we want our kids to leave with a degree. Sometimes we forget that's what we're doing here."

The worst thing would be to do nothing. But the next worst thing is to assume nothing can be done. It can. The NCAA is back in business, but an army of extra investigators is needed.

The schools themselves are backed into corners, surrounded by lies and deceit. The chancellors have to do the right thing and get rid of the liars and cheaters.

The bowls themselves are set up as charities. Please. Take away their toys.

"It's absolutely critical we get our arms around the integrity issues rapidly," NCAA president Mark Emmert told reporters at the Final Four last week.

He seems like a good guy. He came on the job last October. He's faced with some serious issues, and he knows it. But if he can't handle them, fire him.

There are good people in athletics. Good coaches and good athletes. If 7 percent of the athletes in the top programs are criminals, then 93 percent aren't. Get rid of the bad guys. We know who they are. They're the guys who got too big for their britches. They're the guys who broke college football.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com