Righteousness has infiltrated our system. It is our duty to react properly.

Chastise it. Shove it. Dropkick it.

To preserve the blessed impurity of college athletics, we must protect ourselves from the likes of Vanderbilt. Gordon Gee, the school’s chancellor, has abolished his athletic department. Gee has fired his athletic director and begun the process to fold his varsity programs into what is basically an intramurals office.

“For too long, college athletics has been segregated from the core mission of the university,” he said during his announcement.

Segregated? Who does Gee think he is? Frederick Douglass? Vanderbilt can take its pretentiousness and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. The Commodores’ football program can provide directions.

On the surface, this decision is admirable and righteous. In reality, it’s a con coated with so much self-indulgence that we must issue a challenge. If Vanderbilt really wants to be righteous, it should leave the Southeastern Conference.

If you don’t want to play this game, get off the field.

College athletics is a multi-billion dollar industry filled with examples of corruption and deceit and greed. Last I checked, these things are not consistent with the core mission of any university.

If you don’t want to play this game, get off the field. College athletics function like a vigilante to the university’s cause. The benefits, including money and prestige, of a great program are indisputable. The way in which a great program acquires such fame is hardly ever consistent with the alleged academics-first goals of a school. Nonetheless, academics and athletics need each other. And the athletic department must be allowed to operate in a different manner.

We are not advocating cheating or any type of corruption here. The point is this: When you commit to having a big-time athletic program, you commit to a vicious existence in which admissions standards and graduation rates and strict university policies are more rhetoric than reality.

Competition overrides most everything. There is only one moral obligation: to do your best to win and earn a larger portion of that money.

If you don’t want to play this game, get off the field. Vandy doesn’t want to play anymore, but it won’t get out of the way. Gee tells us that we should expect athletics at Vanderbilt to grow, or at least remain the same, despite his restructuring. He reminds us that he is not cutting scholarships. Competition still matters, supposedly.

But if President Bush suddenly whacked the Department of Defense, would you feel safe?

Vanderbilt cut off the head of its varsity sports programs, but it wants you to believe that its arms and legs are still attractive enough to get the girl. It’s a con. Ultimately, this program will suffer. But it will still make money while it’s reducing expenses and level of competitiveness. The Commodores’ SEC affiliation ensures it.

You cannot rebuke the system, champion yourself as a pioneer of reform and simultaneously profit from the subject of your snootiness. With the SEC’s reputation and bowl tie-ins and television package, this new Vandy idea would become theft. The Commodores would be stealing money.

If you don’t want to play this game, get off the field. And notice how few people will follow you.

Vanderbilt cannot hang out here with its nose in the air. We’re a different breed in college athletics. We’ll hurt you — and find a way to cover it up.

That’s the way it works. If you don’t like it, you have to go.