It's about time. It's about time that public pressure was too much for Iowa men's basketball coach Steve Alford to handle. It's about time that he dismissed star Pierre Pierce from the team after the Hawkeye's leading scorer faced his second run-in with the law.

Pierce is under investigation for intent to commit sexual abuse, burglary, criminal mischief and false imprisonment, The Des Moines Register first reported Monday. Now these are only charges against Pierre, but he is no stranger to the cuffs. In 2002, the former Hawkeye guard pled guilty to assault causing injury on a player who was on the Iowa women's basketball team at the time.

Now before you begin fanning Alford with cornhusks and calling him "Mr. Morality," the former Indiana point guard is dismissing Pierce to save his own job, not to make a stand for what's right in college basketball.

If Alford wanted to make a statement he would have dismissed Pierce when his guard-turned-alleged sexual predator admitted to committing assault causing injury in 2002.

For the first time people are starting to look at Alford not as that darling point guard who married his grade school playmate and had to play for that mean Bobby Knight at Indiana. Instead it's time to see Alford (whose stock has dropped faster than Lou Bega from the charts) as a conniving, slick-haired, used car salesman type who tries to push everything off of him and onto the fact that his point guard was never taught how to go about finding a girlfriend.

It's great to see that Alford's bio on www.hawkeyesports.com states that he's involved in Special Olympics and the Ronald McDonald House, and he (now sit down for this one) serves on the national Board of Directors for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I heard that the Pope has taken ill, and the way the University of Iowa makes it sound, Alford would be over-qualified to step in and help out with that job.

It's time to stop pumping up Alford as one of the great young minds in college basketball, and more importantly, it's time to stop mentioning him as a great humanitarian.

If Alford wasn't in the hot seat for being an overpaid, overvalued coach, Pierce would still be on the team, allowing sexual assault to go on as a college activity. Instead people started to dig deep into the Iowa coal mine and, like a true canary, Alford died under all the pressure.

I always had trouble with the old saying but I never knew it went, "If it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, then it must be a Hoosier turned Hawkeye."

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Feb. 3 2005.