Bill Self will be on the sidelines Tuesday, but Silvio De Sousa will not. (Getty)

The college basketball season begins Tuesday with a doubleheader that includes the No. 1 team in the nation … the Kansas Jayhawks.

It’s a true showcase for everything the sport represents because one month after the first of three federal fraud trials unearthed a treasure trove of NCAA violations, KU will not feature suspended player Silvio De Sousa but will feature not-suspended coach Bill Self.

Of course.

De Sousa is out while Kansas investigates whether his guardian, Fenny Falmagne, was paid $2,500 by a former so-called Adidas “bag man” T.J. Gassnola to send the 6-9 forward to Lawrence.

There is no indication, and it would fly against the way most of these deals work, that De Sousa had any idea what Falmagne was doing.

There are plenty of indications that Bill Self did have an idea what Falmagne was doing.

Yet De Sousa is suspended pending investigation and Self is not because, well, because this is college athletics and when scandal hits it’s perfectly fine for a coach to keep coaching but it’s not fine for a player to keep playing.

Start with this: When it comes to these kinds of deals, it is very common for the parents/guardian/AAU coach or whomever to not tell the teenage player about any monetary arrangements. In the same trial, Brian Bowen Sr. repeatedly testified that his son, Brian “Tugs” Bowen, knew nothing about years of under-the-table payments made to the family for Tugs’ services. Bowen Sr. said it would be too shameful to have mentioned it.

In this case, De Sousa hails from Angola and came to the America as a high schooler in search of opportunity. Through the process, Falmagne became his legal guardian. It is quite reasonable to assume Falmagne never told De Sousa anything (Falmagne, for his part, denies Gassnola’s account). There also has been zero evidence unearthed to suggest Falmagne did tell De Sousa.

Doesn’t matter. NCAA rules say the player doesn’t need to have knowledge of the actions of a third party. And thus, since he might be guilty, De Sousa is suspended just in case he’s later found guilty.

Forget the presumption of innocence. That’s saved for Bill Self.

Self was in constant contact with the Adidas AAU team director who was handling the money drop. Gassnola testified for two days about all of his ties to college coaches, including how he saw it as his job to deliver the best Adidas-sponsored high school and AAU players to Adidas-sponsored college teams.

No program was more important to Adidas than Kansas. The company and the school have a $191 million endorsement deal.

As that deal was about to be re-upped, Gassnola texted Self to thank him for helping get it done and making it clear how important Kansas was to Adidas.

“I’m happy with Adidas,” Self texted back. “Just got to get a couple of real guys.”

Gee, wonder what that meant?

“In my mind, it’s KU, Bill Self,” Gassnola texted back, intimating how Kansas deserved the best players before other Adidas schools such as Louisville and North Carolina State got theirs. “Everyone else fall into line. Too [expletive] bad. That’s what’s right for Adidas basketball. And I know I am RIGHT. The more you win, have lottery pics [sic] and you happy. That’s how it should work in my mind.”

“That’s how ur [sic] works at UNC and Duke,” Self texted, mentioning a couple of Nike-sponsored schools.

Gassnola mentioned Nike’s Kentucky connection, too, before texting: “I promise you I got this. I have never let you down. Except Dyondre [Deandre Ayton] lol. We will get it right.”

Gassnola testified that he paid a friend of Ayton’s $15,000 to get involved with the future No. 1 draft pick. He also tried to set up housing and a job for Ayton’s mother if Deandre attended KU. It didn’t come through. Ayton wound up at Arizona instead.

Gassnola stands a burly, goateed 6-foot-6. His personality is even larger than his frame. There is no one with even a modicum of intelligence who would look at him and think whatever “help” he was going to provide in recruiting involved, say, touting the size and scope of the KU library to recruits.

He has the same attorney as the Mafia hit man currently suspected of murdering former Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger in a federal prison last week. Gassnola is no mobster, but that’s a funny coincidence that might surprise no one.

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