San Jose, Calif. ? Our long national nightmare is over. The Sammy Sosa case has been corked and bottled. After an appeal, he’s serving a seven-game suspension. The republic is saved.

It really is fascinating what ruffles the dander of sports fans these days. Sosa’s corked bat episode was entertaining. But why anyone would care about it for more than five seconds is a mystery.

In the major leagues, players do stupid stuff to cheat every day. Sometimes, they are caught and punished. Sosa’s weeklong suspension sounds about right. But in the grand scheme of sports integrity, the episode shouldn’t provoke much hand wringing.

What should? Glad you asked.

This past week, ranking far lower on the hand-wringing scoreboard, a smelly mess has enveloped the University of Washington. The school’s football coach, Rick Neuheisel, is drowning in the deep end of a March Madness basketball pool he entered in violation of NCAA rules. Neuheisel surely will lose his job over the incident, as soon as the school can figure out the cheapest way to dump him.

Neuheisel’s mistake? He entered his Seattle neighborhood’s annual NCAA basketball tournament “auction” to pick the winning team. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has reported that Neuheisel wagered $6,400 during his two years of participation in the pool and won $12,123 in the process.

That is no $5 pool, you may have noted. That is a $5 pool on steroids and ephedrine with Bill Walton screaming overwrought commentary in the background.

Neuheisel’s excuse is that before the NCAA Tournament began last March, an assistant athletic director at Washington e-mailed a memo encouraging everybody on the staff to bet like drunken Iraqi looters.

Well, not really. But that’s what Neuheisel wants us to believe. He has a thread of truth working in his favor. At every Division One school, a staff member is in charge of dealing with NCAA regulations. Washington’s compliance officer, Dana Richardson, interpreted the rules on gambling rather casually.

“If you have friends outside of ICA (Intercollegiate Athletics) that have pools on any of the basketball tournaments, you can participate,” Richardson wrote in her e-mail. “You cannot place bets with a bookie or organize your own pool inside or outside of ICA.”

In fact, NCAA regulations prohibit athletes and coaches from gambling on any athletic event in any way. Other schools know this. Etienne Thomas, the compliance officer at San Jose State, did a double take when she heard about Richardson’s message.

“I find it very surprising that she would put out a memo to that effect,” said Thomas, who has worked at SJSU just a few weeks, but previously served as Howard University’s assistant compliance officer where she dealt with the same issues.

“There are gray areas,” said Thomas. “But the general rule is: When in doubt, don’t. In fact, we used to joke about it — you don’t bet on anything that involves people.”

In other words, if Duke and Syracuse were putting slot machines on the basketball court instead of point guards, there would be no problem with betting. But that’s the problem. In American culture, we are moving more and more toward erasing that distinction.

It is odd how the same people who became so indignant and righteous about Sosa’s corked bats routinely wink or joke about gambling on sports.

For them, here is one man’s e-mail memo: Stop winking. Start worrying.