Who got JR? Down in Greater Phoenix they're still debating the issue. One body of thought has it that JR Redmond was the innocent victim of a scheming, gold-digging femme fatale, while another view is more charitable toward Francine Arthur Redmond and holds that her soon-to-be ex-husband's wounds were largely self-inflicted.

Myself, I think we can all learn at least a couple of things from this. One is that if you see this Arthur woman coming down the street, give her a very wide berth indeed. The other is that the entire argument of blame is probably superfluous, because by any measure I can devise, a fellow as stupid as JR Redmond doesn't belong in college anyway.

Considering that college athletics have become little more than a proving ground for subsequent professional careers, there is something quaint and vaguely admirable about the neo-Victorian posture maintained by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In an age in which the line of demarcation between professional and amateur has been blurred beyond recognition, the NCAA spends millions investigating its member institutions, thereby ensuring the pristine quality of life for its student athletes.

NCAA investigators, should they unearth violations, are given the power to declare individual players ineligible, to impose discipline by banning member institutions from post-season play, to diminish the number of scholarships a college is empowered to grant, and, in extreme cases, such as that of the Southern Methodist University football team a decade or so ago, to shut down an entire programme and ban participation in a sport (the so-called "death penalty") altogether.

The NCAA's gestapo is so feared that many large colleges and universities employ a full-time "compliance officer", whose sole function is to ensure that the institution's policies do not run conspicuously foul of the NCAA's arcane regulations. A college may, for instance, employ a special tutor to keep a football star athletically eligible, but should an assistant coach loan the same player money to fly home for Christmas he would put the entire athletic department at risk.

Anyway, back to JR Redmond. When we visited Phoenix for a Patriots-Cardinals game a few weeks ago the bare bones of the case at hand were just beginning to surface. It has since become a sporting cause celebre, and it is safe to say that if Redmond weren't such an outstanding player he would be a national laughing stock.

Redmond is a 22-year-old running back for Arizona State University, and rated among the top three in his position in the country. He will be chosen in the first round in next April's NFL draft. In other words, he is a millionaire-in-waiting.

Francine Arthur is a 31-year-old single mother of two who is a student at the same university, and is (or was, until quite recently) a part-time employee of the school's athletic department as well.

Redmond has maintained to investigators that any relationship with Ms Arthur was "platonic", while she has disagreed.

Three issues, however, are not in dispute. The first is that in August of this year Arthur loaned Redmond her mobile phone, which he proceeded to use to make over $400 worth of telephone calls.

The second is that a month later she paid for a trip in which the couple visited Las Vegas and shared a room at the Luxor hotel.

The third is that Arthur warned Redmond of an impending NCAA investigation, and told him that the aforementioned incidents might cost him his collegiate eligibility and jeopardise his position in the draft, a dire consequence which could be headed off if the two became man and wife.

According to Redmond, Arthur told him that they could always have the union annulled after the football season, when the heat would be off. So off the two dashed to a wedding chapel in Mesa, Arizona, where they tied the knot.

Redmond maintains that the marriage was never consummated, and that the trip to Las Vegas was merely to visit his brother there. Arthur prefers to describe the same interlude as a "honeymoon", and claims that Redmond told her he'd "always wanted to do it in a hot tub".

Last month two things happened to cool this blissful union, although it isn't clear which occurred first. One is that it began to dawn on Redmond that there wasn't even a whiff of this investigation Arthur had warned him about. The other is that Arthur began to notice some unfamiliar numbers on the bill for her mobile phone, which was still in the football player's possession. She dialled one of them herself, only to hear the voice of another woman who identified herself as JR Redmond's girlfriend.

Now, in short order, there was an investigation. Redmond attempted to call in his chips and have the marriage annulled. No dice, said Arthur, dollar signs no doubt dancing in her head. We're married.

She even produced a stack of Redmond's clothing, neatly filed in a drawer at her own apartment. Redmond claimed she had rifled the duds from his closet under the pretext of having them cleaned and never returned them.

Redmond filed for divorce on October 22nd. Arthur, under some pressure, resigned her position in the athletic department that week. The NCAA, after listening to both sides of the story, came down with a penalty that was, under the circumstances, surprisingly lenient - a one-game suspension in which Redmond was ordered to sit out the Sun Devils' October 30th game against Oregon. (The NCAA must have concluded that spending the next several months trying to wriggle out of this marriage from hell was going to be punishment enough.)

Redmond came back from his one-game suspension against Southern California the following Saturday. He ran for 148 yards and three touchdowns, caught three passes, played free safety and had four tackles on defence, and returned seven punts. He was in the game for 90 plays in all, and although he cooled off in last Saturday's loss to Stanford, his stock in next spring's draft has undeniably soared.

Ah yes, JR is going to make somebody a fine husband indeed.