The start of the college basketball regular season is quickly approaching, and it couldn’t be too soon.

The sooner college basketball is able to forget about the past offseason, the better it will be for all involved.

During a summer that saw a tragic death at Baylor, and a coach who tried to cover up how much he knew about the situation that caused the apparent murder, it’s time for the season to start.

Other coaching problems occurred at Georgia with the father-son cheating tandem of Jim Harrick and Jim Harrick Jr.

Then there was of course the events that occurred at St. Bonaventure, in which the players bailed on the season after members on the team were suspended. Worse yet, the school’s coach Jan Van Breda Kolff, stood by and watched as his team decided to fold up camp and did not do anything to stop the movement.

Coaches did not have a good end to last season, and their troublesome times continued during the offseason. Major forms of media did not allow sports fans and college basketball fans to forget about these issues.

ESPN and other national media members also could not have been much more negative to the sport and what is happening.

Issues such as what has happened with the coaches over the summer and an increase in students leaving early for the NBA has caused many skeptics to say the sport is deteriorating in quality.

But all of this has only focused on large, nationally recognizable events and schools. Here at Eastern, it has been a much calmer and normal offseason summer.

But does anybody at ESPN notice the athletes stay all four years at smaller schools like Eastern? Does anybody notice nationally that the athletes actually go to class here and don’t flunk physical education like Ohio State’s former running back Maurice Clarrett.

Simply because Eastern goes under the radar, the national media chooses to ignore the fact that college basketball at Eastern’s level is doing just fine.

Although nobody seems to be perfect in college basketball anymore, even in the Ohio Valley Conference schools like Tennessee State manage to raise more than a few eyebrows.

But people should just move on. The people who caused all of these problems recently are gone, not be heard from again hopefully.

It’s time for the games to begin, and it’s not a moment too soon. The games will at least shut the critics up for a while.

March Madness will role around again and the same amount of excitement as always will surround it.

The rivalries will continue to rage on and the games will be played with the same intensity as they used to be.

It’s time to see the competition come back and make everybody forget about who messed up in the coaching ranks.

Long live the popularity of college basketball and all that goes along with it.