You can't blame a guy for bettering himself. Or can you?

When it comes to coaches who jump ship before their contracts are up, the National Collegiate Athletic Association might want to consider doing just that.

The most recent spate of defections was set off by the retirement of Bill Guthridge from North Carolina, arguably the citadel of college hoops. To fill their hole, the Tar Heels settled on Notre Dame's Matt Doherty, a logical choice -- Mr. Doherty is a former Tar Heel player himself -- with one minor problem: He had completed only one year of his five-year contract. In any event, Notre Dame soon filled its hole by picking up Mike Brey from the University of Delaware, where he had just put his own John Hancock on a five-year extension.

Now, we doubt that there are too many innocents left when it comes to college sports. And we have never understood why professional athletes should have to pass through college at all, an arrangement that only encourages fraud and cynicism. But when it comes to scandalous behavior, Indiana coach Bobby Knight's boorishness pales in comparison with the different standard by which America's institutions of higher learning treat its players and coaches. A player who leaves one school for another has to sit out a season. A coach who does the same ends up with a fatter contract and maybe some nice side endorsement.

What makes this especially galling is that, while coaches are amply compensated for their efforts, the players who bring in all that moolah get no compensation whatsoever. Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, managing editor of the American Spectator and our favorite basketball consultant, suggests a simple remedy: making coaches who leave before their contracts are up sit out a season. Or, conversely, allowing players the same freedom to leave as their coaches now possess.

In fairness, Messrs. Doherty and Brey did nothing unusual. At about the same time that Mr. Doherty was moving to Chapel Hill, Tulane's Perry Clark was signing a five-year contract with Miami -- never mind that he had five years left on his contract at Tulane. More notoriously, back in 1989, Michigan's Bill Frieder announced that he was moving to Arizona State University just two days before his Wolverines were to enter the NCAA tournament (which they ended up winning without him). And coach-jumping is almost a sport in itself at Providence College, which lost Rick Pitino to the New York Knicks just after renegotiating a contract with him; a few years later the Friars also lost coach Pete Gillen to Virginia just one year into a renegotiated seven-year contract.

Each spring we are treated to much public wailing and gnashing of teeth as many of college basketball's most gifted players decide to turn pro. The incentives for doing so are overwhelming: an immediate, multimillion-dollar contract vs. hitting the books for another two years or so, possibly risking an injury that would end their pro chances altogether. Wouldn't the coaches who beg them to stay and finish their degrees be far more credible if they were forced to stay themselves and live out their own contracts?