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DALLAS — Word that Keith Frazier, who played on one of the best college teams you will not see this postseason, had dropped out barely registered beyond the confines of Dallas.

Frazier, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard who was Southern Methodist’s third-leading scorer, simply stopped showing up for practice in early January, with the Mustangs still undefeated. A few days later, he left the university.

As emotionally fragile as he was talented, Frazier stood at the center of an academic scandal that led the N.C.A.A. to ban S.M.U. from the postseason this year and suspend its coach, Larry Brown, who is in the basketball Hall of Fame, for nine games.

A few days after Frazier dropped out, I asked Coach Brown about the student. Brown shook his head; more than a hint of a native Brooklyn rasp lingers in his voice. “I think I invested more time in that kid than my family,” Brown said. “It’s a tragedy now in college sports — kids leave.”

That is not the tragedy.

The tragedy is that the adults in big-time high school and college basketball, despite attempts at reform and despite the presence of many fine student-athletes, exert far more energy trying to churn out victories than trying to provide an education. Young men like Frazier, who just three years ago was Brown’s top recruit, are collateral damage.

Frazier’s educational track record was pockmarked with failure. His high school grades mysteriously and quickly improved whenever his eligibility to play was at stake. He most likely had too many absences and failing grades to graduate from high school. And top officials at S.M.U. ignored their own professors, who recommended that Frazier not be admitted to S.M.U., an academically tough university.

Frazier took an online summer course before enrolling in freshman classes. An S.M.U. team assistant secretly completed Frazier’s work, an N.C.A.A. report found.

Frazier’s walk up and tumble down the stairs of big-time high school and college basketball kicks open a door to the corruption and neglect that characterize the educational lives of too many elite athletes. This pervasive corruption extends from Division I colleges down into the high school and amateur ranks.

There are bogus addresses for players, doctored grade sheets and illegal recruiting. In one terrible case, Dallas high school coaches concocted fake addresses and stashed top basketball players in a poorly supervised home. Two teenagers, who were friends, got into a fistfight, and one died.

Frazier, thankfully, remains healthy. But no adult, not even, it appears, his own mother, seems to have demonstrated more than a passing interest in his education. As long as he stroked jumpers and took jagged, high-leaping dashes to the hoop, all was fine.

“High school athletics are a tight little club where nobody wants to question anything,” said Anita Connally, a wiry former middle school teacher who, as the Dallas schools’ athletic compliance officer, investigated the grade-fixing and recruiting scandals surrounding Keith Frazier.

Dallas school officials later fired Connally, who was a fierce reformer. “You’d dig deep here,” she said, “and everyone just gets angry.”

This column is based on two confidential reports by the Dallas schools — which contained Frazier’s attendance records and extensive transcripts of investigative interviews with more than a dozen officials — and the N.C.A.A. sanctions report on S.M.U. I also interviewed two dozen players, teachers, investigators and coaches.

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Michael Powell is a regular contributor to The New York Times.