SEC football is a joke, only nobody’s laughing.

It’s a den of thieves and cheaters, with its many upstanding coaches and players Georgia coach Mark Richt and Alabama defensive coordinator Carl Torbush among them forced to compete with the dregs of college football.

When it’s not one defensive tackle being brokered by his high school coach to an SEC school for a small fortune, as was the case of former Alabama player Albert Means, it’s another being charged with selling marijuana from his apartment, as was the case two weeks ago with Arkansas’ Jermaine Brooks. And Brooks was a co-captain.

At the annual preseason SEC news conference, Arkansas coach Houston Nutt announced that his best safety, Ken Hamlin, was in jail at that very moment. Unless he was on the road crew.

“He might be out right now with some other inmates alongside a highway,” Nutt said.

Since 1953, SEC schools have been found guilty 42 times of major NCAA violations. That’s almost one per year.

Nine times in the past 12 years, an SEC school has been placed on NCAA probation.

As is often the case in SEC football, Alabama leads the wayon probation twice since 1990.

A newspaper report has said South Carolina now is under NCAA investigation regarding the recruitment of former Gamecocks tailback Derek Watson.

The Gamecocks are coached by Lou Holtz, whose past two schools Notre Dame and Minnesota were placed on probation by the NCAA for violations committed when he was coach.

Holtz is shocked shocked! at the current allegations. “I’m violently upset,” he said.

You’re not the only one, Lou.

Sometimes you wonder if the NCAA could transfer a few of the cleaner football schools, such as Vanderbilt, to another league and give the rest of the SEC the so-called “death penalty” it handed Southern Methodist in 1987.

Wipe SEC football out, then start over in five years. On second thought, that would be pointless. Some people have called SMU’s punishment an NCAA nuclear bomb, and you know what are said to survive nuclear fallout: The cockroaches.

What took so long?

Thump. Sorry. Must have fainted. Could have sworn the newspaper was reporting something about the NCAA putting less emphasis on standardized tests and more on grade-point averages when considering whether a high school recruit is eligible for a scholarship.

What’s this, the NCAA changing one of its major rules simply to benefit student-athletes?

But why did it take the NCAA so long to figure out a student’s performance in the classroom, over the course of four years, should mean more than one test?

Important thoughts

l Oklahoma had better thank its lucky stars it doesn’t play Kansas State this regular seasonand better hope it doesn’t see the Wildcats in the Big 12 title game.

l Maybe they should just hand out two Heismans next season.