Will rule changes in college basketball make a difference?

"I'm a little insulated from some of it and maybe that's one of the reasons I really like coaching where I'm coaching because maybe at some other places I would be put in some positions I'm not put in here," Brey said. "But yet, we do have to get enough good players to try and compete and keep your job. So you've got to work in the network. Or as one of my old bosses once called it, 'The underworld that is college basketball.' ''

Brey and Hewitt agreed on some of the changes - the faux recruiting services, payments to summer-league teams.

This recruiting service rule is similar to the banning of the exhibition games against AAU teams where coaches with access to prospects were getting paid big money to bring their teams to play a preseason game.

"It got a lot of people off the hook," Brey said. "I was getting calls, 'Well, how come you haven't played us yet, this is our number, this is what we need.' ''

Notre Dame, Brey said, subscribes to a number of the recruiting services just because they don't want to take a chance of getting shut out of an area. The coach is pleased that he won't have to worry about that any longer.

But, if it's not that, it may be something else. Where there is money to be made by winning, there is always an incentive to take risks.

"Am I that naive in not understanding that we are that bad as men's coaches?" Hewitt wondered.

That is the essential question. Are they that bad? Are some of them that bad that all are guilty by association? Can some apparently well-intentioned rules change the perception? Can anything?