Really?

That was my reaction to a verdict reached by a jury in a trial conducted these past few weeks in the Southern District of New York.

Given all that transpires in American sport during the months of September and October — the end of baseball, the goings-on in both professional and college football, the Ryder Cup, and the beginning of professional basketball and hockey — it is safe to say that this particular sports-oriented federal trial flew way, way under the radar of the average sports fan.

But it was a trial of major interest to anyone who cares about college basketball and, by association, college football, a pair of sporting enterprises unique to the United States of America.

It was important not just in the lives of the three men convicted of the “crime’’ (and, yes, there is a reason for the quotation marks). That’s because the next question is, where do we go from here? How far will the government take this business?

The three men convicted by the jury of their, ahem, peers were Jim Gatto and Merl Code, both executives with Adidas, and Christian Dawkins, best identified as a middleman between shoe companies and various institutions of higher learning interested in securing top-flight basketball players. The charge was that they had intent to “commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by paying the families to steer top high school recruits to preferred Adidas-sponsored colleges.’’

You might say, yeah, well, OK, tell me something I don’t know. Money is changing hands with regard to recruiting. I’m shocked, SHOCKED about the gambling taking place in this establishment. OK, fine. Sounds like an NCAA violation; I get that. But what was this doing in court?

Are you ready? The idea put forth by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and prosecuted by Assistant US Attorney Edward “Ted’’ Diskant, a 38-year-old Yalie, is that the colleges were “defrauded’’ by this process because the result was they had been — hope you’re sitting down — “duped’’ into paying players bound to be declared ineligible.

Have you finished laughing yet? The colleges were portrayed as victims, not cheaters. Talk about something that should have been laughed out of court by anyone who knows anything about the workings of big-time college sport in America.

But a jury bought it.

This is not the end of it. On deck is a February trial for former Auburn and Indiana Pacers star Chuck Person and codefendant Rashan Michel, an Atlanta clothier. That will be followed in April by yet another trial featuring Code, Dawkins, and former college assistants Tony Bland (USC), Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State), and Emanuel “Book’’ Richardson (Arizona).

Before all this happens there could be plea deals, of course, and that would require some serious “flipping’’ that would reveal the sordid details of payoffs to parents, guardians, and God knows whom. A lot of people out there know a lot, and that would include Massachusetts-bred T.J. Gassnola, an AAU team director and accused Adidas “bag man’’ who could dime out perhaps a score of colleges. The word is that the feds have leaned heavily already on Dawkins and that he is going the Omertà route, at least for now.

I’m sorry, but yes, this is certainly NCAA business. It is not a threat to society, however. But Messrs. Gatto, Code, and Dawkins may be facing some serious hard time. As a kicker, the sentencing is scheduled for March 5, on the eve of the NCAA Tournament. That’s just the kind of publicity the NCAA needs, all right.

The premise is absurd. The idea that schools whose representatives engage in buying players are themselves being victimized smacks of a Seinfeldian Bizarro World. I’m not suggesting that the convicted trio are exemplary citizens, but all they were doing was playing by the unofficial rules of the game. If they actually wind up in jail every administrator and coach at the universities in question, starting with the school presidents, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and should be doing everything in their power to prevent it. To borrow a phrase, have they no shame?

For the umpteenth time, I must provide full disclosure. I have had college sports on my menu since the age of 6 when my father became the assistant athletic director at Villanova. I knew the Big 5 before it was even formalized in 1955. I am particularly partial to college basketball, having seen at least one game at 197 different venues, by my best count. I have been to 31 Final Fours, the last two strictly as a spectator. I continue to love the product, but it is getting harder and harder to justify my support for an enterprise that has allowed itself to form alliances with the insidious AAU and the omnipresent sneaker companies, as opposed to the high school coaches who once controlled the development and placement of players. True, there were some notorious high school coaches with their hands out back in the day, but the money transfer was nothing remotely in scope compared to what it is today.

I cannot exaggerate how ridiculous the idea is that the schools in question have been “defrauded.’’ I cannot fathom what has motivated the people in the Southern District of New York to waste their time and the time of everyone else with such a preposterous charge.

I’m taking the liberty of guessing that the jury was comprised of 12 people who never heard of James Naismith, John Wooden, Michael Jordan, or LeBron James; that the goal is 10 feet tall; or what the Final Four is. Or that colleges even offer competitive sport. These 12 people could not possibly have had any idea what they were doing.

Sport in court is seldom a good idea. And though I believe in being judicious with the use of the words “always’’ and “never,’’ I will say I have never heard of a dumber reason to be in court than this one.

Bob Ryan’s column appears regularly in the Globe. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.