Tuesday, big-time college “student-athletics,” in sweeping Federal arrests and indictments, again was revealed as the fraud it is, worsened by the purchased authority — payola — over extra-vulnerable kids, adult coaches operating beneath various lighting and repute, and school administrators — of sneaker cartels, in this case, Adidas.

How the earth shook, Tuesday! Big-time college sports would change, or at least appear that they don’t allow the sneaker cartel to serve as their outside masters, dangling tens of millions in cash and status-symbol merchandise in front of everyone, including college presidents, many called “Doctor.”

But by Friday, the payola process was conspicuously and unashamedly back — it never left — in full view of national audiences.

Friday on ESPN against Miami, the Duke Blue Devils wore charcoal black football uniforms as per Nike’s demand. That the school’s colors have been blue and white since 1889 doesn’t matter; Duke has sold Nike the authority to do as it pleases to Duke.

In fact, Nike owns a big chunk of Duke’s famous basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, which is why the Blue Devils now often wear black basketball uniforms. He knows it, Duke knows it, his recruits know it, a compliant media knows it.

Think Coach K was shocked by Tuesday’s bust?

But most big-time football and basketball coaches and programs simultaneously serve two masters — while their schools teach courses in ethics.

The next game on ESPN on Friday night, USC-Washington St., found WSU dressed, on Nike’s orders, in black. WSU’s colors, as heard in the school’s fight song written in 1919, are crimson and gray.

And despite Tuesday’s arrest of James Gatto, Adidas’s top basketball “marketing” rep, Adidas is not about to retreat while Nike dominates ownership stakes in colleges and their teams. Saturday on ESPN, North Carolina St., red and white since 1895, wore charcoal uniforms as per Adidas’ purchased influence.

Why don’t our national men’s and women’s soccer teams always wear red, white and blue — our school colors since Betsy Ross got the itch to stitch? Because Nike owns enough of both to dictate the colors, and Nike, among others, go with those colors that best reflect what unpaid fashion-consultant street gangs favor.

In the hours following Rick Pitino’s firing for his latest “shocked” ignorance as to how his teams are recruited — the previous shock was over the use of strippers and at least one prostitute — readers checked in with the only half-sarcastic tout that Pitino will next land with ESPN.

Why not? That’s how the late Jim Valvano landed at ESPN. He’d been bounced from NC State after he was exposed for winking at academic impropriety, payments to players, and, as a “Nike coach,” feeding his players “excessive numbers” of Nike sneakers they sold, pocketing their takes.

Small wonder that both Nike boss Phil Knight and Pitino, among other college coaches caught knowing nothing, are in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Also interesting is that Auburn assistant coach, ex-NBA player Chuck Person, Tuesday was arrested in the sweep, charged with six felonies. Key word: Auburn.

In 2011, Bruce Pearl was fired as Tennessee’s head coach for lying to NCAA investigators about illegal recruiting. Pearl was essentially suspended from NCAA coaching for three seasons. So Pearl did his time working for ESPN.

And when Pearl’s suspension ended, he was hired as — and remains — head coach at Auburn. Pearl then hired Person, the Auburn assistant coach/recruiter arrested Tuesday.

But that was Tuesday. By Friday, everything was up and running as if nothing had changed. And it hadn’t.

Football lost in translation

There must be a secret mind-control re-education facility, a place broadcasters are sent to parrot long-form, cool-fool nonsense.

In one play, at Temple, Saturday (hey, that’s where I spent Saturday, too!), Houston had third-and-9 from its own 21, we heard this from the ESPN team of Mike Couzens and John Congemi:

Couzens: “[Houston QB Kyle] Postma wants to keep his offense on the field.”

Translation: He wants to make a first down, which wouldn’t be worth saying in plain football English because it would be both self-evident and extremely silly.

Postma then scrambled, also self-evident, for 10 yards, a first down.

Congemi: “He went north and south; he puts his right foot into the ground and goes north and south!” Nurse!

Earlier, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said Florida’s new QB “is finding players who can make plays in space.” That used to be known as being “open.”

The most extraordinary people on earth are found in golf broadcast trucks. These all-knowing supermen demonstrate such spectacular clairvoyance they should be serving our country in far nobler pursuits.

During the Presidents Cup, NBC/Golf Channel came out of commercials, directly to Marc Leishman, preparing to chip for eagle. A moment later, Leishman holed it! Mike Tirico didn’t say anything to the contrary, so this had to be live, right? Incredibly timed live TV, yet again!

Well, maybe it was live, but not likely. TV has so often and for so long conditioned viewers to think — to know — they’re being had that few would believe it if it actually were honest coverage.

More MLB bullpen bungling

DVR Pre-Sleep Alert: While the Twins’ Paul Molitor isn’t as fantasy-stricken as Joe Girardi, he still has plenty of neo-managing moments when he culls his bullpen, pulling the effective reliever until finding the one who will be clobbered.

CBS continues to throw up busy graphics that don’t appear long enough to be read, let alone digested. Sunday’s Jags-Jets included a list of QB Blake Bortles by-down stats that vanished at the snap after approximately two seconds.

Adding to the insufferable state of sports is Dwyane Wade, the 13-year pro who signed a one-year, $2.3 million deal with the Cavs, then, on Day 1, said he’d sure like to return to Miami to play for the Heat.

“Let’s Make A Deal’s” Monty Hall, who died Saturday at 96, was born in Winnipeg, which may explain why, during the 1959-60 NHL season, Hall and Jim Gordon called Rangers’ games on WINS. (Where would I/we be without sports radio historian David Halberstam?)

Paul Pierce , among the NBA’s most uncivil, petulant acts — 97 regular-season technicals, at least three ejections from playoff games — has been hired as an NBA studio analyst by — guess who? — ESPN, from where he can tell us right from wrong.

Take a check, take a knee: Has Roger Goodell publicly apologized yet for the $5.4 million NFL teams accepted from the taxpayer-funded Department of Defense to conduct now worthless patriotic pregame shows? As for Goodell’s PSLs are “good investments,” many resale-market seats to yesterday’s Jags-Jets went for $6.