The president was so interested he took time out from saving the country from economic ruin to fill out his bracket. Television ratings have been up even though Billy Packer is working this NCAA tournament from a Las Vegas sports book and, thanks to Villanova, we don’t have to see Mike Krzyzewski’s smiling face for another year.

Overlook the thousands of empty seats that are a natural byproduct of a rotten economy, and it’s hard to find much wrong with this year’s tournament. The games have been decent, if not historic, and enough favorites have won to keep the interest of the millions across the country who have a few bucks riding on the outcome.

Unfortunately, the madness this March isn’t confined to the court. As usual, the seamy underbelly of college basketball lurks close by.

It surfaced this week not once, but twice, reminding us of the hypocrisy of the NCAA at the very moment the organization’s crown jewel plays out on television screens everywhere.

First there was Jim Calhoun, the Connecticut coach who seems to get upset whenever people question his huge salary or how he runs his powerhouse program. Basketball coaches are notorious control freaks to begin with, but Calhoun did himself no favors this week when he tried to disparage the source of concerns about his recruiting practices instead of dealing with the allegations themselves.

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Perhaps Calhoun thought the allegations by Yahoo! Sports about the recruiting of Nate Miles would go away when he dismissed them as coming from a blog. But bloggers don’t do the kind of digging Yahoo’s journalists did in using interviews and documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws to show how Miles was allegedly given lodging, transportation, meals and representation by a sports agent, all in violation of NCAA regulations.

Calhoun was questioned about it again Friday, and finally seemed to understand that these were serious allegations. The fact they came out when his team was trying to gain a spot in the Final Four may have been unfortunate for UConn fans, but that’s life when you’re in the big leagues of college basketball.

Never mind that the NCAA is filled with arcane rules like the one that makes it a violation for schools to furnish certain types of the tournament’s official drink, Vitaminwater, to players. Other types are OK, though, which hopefully includes the coolers of Vitaminwater that are displayed prominently on all tournament courts, lest the NCAA be caught in a violation itself.

It’s an open secret that many rules are ignored by many coaches, especially when it comes to recruiting. Coaches cheated long before college basketball became such a big business, and the temptation to do whatever is necessary to grab star players rises exponentially with the huge money colleges now pay their coaches.

Besides, the NCAA long ago let big-time college sports get out of control, and trying to pretend that the athletes in the tournament are pure amateur students is ridiculous when their coach might make $2 million a year and the assistants all pull down six figures themselves.

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Which brings us, of course, to Billy Gillispie, the carpetbagging coach who went through three teams in seven years and now suddenly finds himself without a team. Gillispie’s expertise at persuading 18-year-old stars to play on his teams got him $2.3 million a year from Kentucky, plus an obscene $6 million buyout clause that his lawyers will surely seek to enforce.

If they’re successful, Gillispie will pocket more than $10 million for two years at Kentucky, or about $250,000 for each Wildcat win during his brief term. Think about that the next time you’re watching an NCAA infomercial about how pristine they want you to believe college sports really are.

Shady recruiting and millionaire coaches seem to go together, largely because if you can recruit in college basketball you can win and if you win you get paid huge money. You don’t need to be a great coach on the floor if your players are better than the other team’s players, even if you graduate only one in three of them like Connecticut does.

As we were reminded this week, there’s a method to their madness.

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