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(File photo )

Baylor has to go. Away. Disappear. Poof.

Football season is officially done, at all levels, which makes it easy to allow the sport's biggest scandal to slip our minds as we await the onset of spring football.

But we can't. None of us can. Especially not the NCAA, which must deal with this mess before it taints yet another season. Or worse: disappears into the abyss, or sees yet another young woman, at Baylor or anywhere, victimized by a college program and university that should be protecting her.

It doesn't really matter how long it takes for the tsunami of sordid allegations levied against the Baylor's football program and leadership to be resolved. The lawsuit filed on behalf of a former female student just over a week ago, along with other subsequent revelations, are enough.

Together, they portray a program that almost defies description: a culture in which alcohol, drugs, and sex were utilized as recruiting tools, where as many as 52 rapes by at least 31 players between 2011 and 2014 -- including five gang rapes -- were alleged to have occurred, along with other crimes, all of it facilitated, manipulated and swept under the turf by former (thank God) coaches, including ex-head coach Art Briles, and others.

Filed by attorney John Clune of Boulder, Colorado, the Title IX lawsuit says: "From 2009-15, Baylor football players were responsible for numerous crimes involving violent physical assault, armed robbery, burglary, drugs, guns, and, notably, the most widespread culture of sexual violence and abuse of women ever reported in a collegiate athletic program. Baylor football under Briles had run wild, in more ways than one, and Baylor was doing nothing to stop it."

The woman who filed the lawsuit was a member of the now-disbanded Baylor Bruins hostess club. She alleges members of the group were encouraged to have sex with recruits and players. (She also reported in 2013 that she had been assaulted in her apartment by a Bears player and a practice squad player; in the lawsuit, she alleges the practice squad player, Myke Chatman, was previously accused of sexually assaulting an athletic trainer.)

It was the second suit filed that week, and the sixth federal lawsuit overall filed in conjunction with the scandal that led to the firing last summer of Briles, the resignation of athletic director Ian McCaw and the demotion and subsequent resignation of university president Kenneth Starr.

It all says Baylor, recently one of the premier programs in college football, has to go. The NCAA must unlock its secret drawer and pull out its most lethal weapon: the appropriately named "death penalty," which would flush an entire season of Bears football, strip away about a zillion scholarships and perhaps begin to sanitize the cesspool that the program has been.

It's only been handed down five times ever -- most famously against the Southern Methodist University football program exactly three decades ago, when the school, already on three years' probation for recruiting violations and the most penalized school in what was then Division 1-A, was found to have paid 21 players a total of about $61,000 from a slush fund created by a booster.

Seems, sadly, almost paltry by today's sordid scandal barometer, but the Mustangs were "serial" rules breakers and thus: their 1987 season was cancelled, all 1988 home games were deleted (away games were allowed so opposing teams would not lose money), and the team lost 55 scholarships over four years.

It was a true death-blow. The program, then an almost perennial Southwest Conference and bowl contender, never fully recovered. Not even close. SMU, now in Conference USA, subsequently had only one winning season until 2007 and didn't play in another bowl game until 2009.

Those sobering repercussions are partly why the NCAA has only used the death penalty twice since then, and not once against a football program.

It suspended the Morehouse College Division II men's soccer team for the 2004 and '05 seasons after signing and playing two Nigerian players who had played professionally (along with other violations).

Soon thereafter the Division III men's tennis program at MacMurray College lost its 2005-'06 and '06-'07 seasons after a part-time coach was found to have arranged $126,000 worth of grants for 10 foreign-born players; Division III schools are not allowed to offer scholarships. (It didn't help their cause that the coach called several NCAA rules "a joke" at the hearing before the infractions committee.)

Not even Penn State received the death penalty after a shocking report by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh found that the Nittany Lions' iconic coach, Joe Paterno, along with three other top administrators, hid an embarrassing litany of allegations of sexual abuse of young boys made against Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator. In 2012, Sandusky was found guilty on 45 charges of sexual abuse and, later, the NCAA hit Penn State with a $60 million fine, four-year bowl ban and stripped the program of 10 scholarships per year for four years (the latter sanction was reduced the following year).

Some initially described those penalties as even more debilitating than the death penalty. But under new coaches Bill O'Brien and later James Franklin, the Nittany Lions survived and indeed thrived last season, finishing 8-1 in the Big Team (11-3 overall) and reaching the Rose Bowl.

Is what is alleged to have happened at Baylor worse than what happened at Penn State? Both transgressions were beyond egregious, but, yes.

Why? Because, even if only a modicum of the allegations is found to be true, it will be clear that the program disrespected (at minimum) women and all but nurtured sexual predators, then enabled them by shielding them from authorities.

What we know now is more than enough to pull the lever: rape convictions of two former players, financial settlements with three women who said they were assaulted by Bears players, and a flurry of lawsuits that have kept more lawyers busy than President Trump's travel ban and recent revelations that Briles went to great lengths to shield accused players from university and law enforcement authorities.

Late last week, several university regents, in response to a lawsuit filed by former assistant Colin Shillinglaw alleging his termination was unjust, released numerous summaries of text messages sent by former coaches, including Briles and Shillinglaw, showing how they juked the school's disciplinary process in order to keep players on the field and out of court.

I've read enough, and I hope the NCAA has to.

Baylor has to go. Poof.