It’s been quite a week for finger-pointing.

Mere days after the country flipped its collective lid over Don Imus referring to the (almost entirely black) Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” the NFL suspended two of its biggest malcontents for most or all of next year for their off-field shenanigans (even as the killer of Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams remains at large). And on Wednesday, the Duke lacrosse rape case screeched to a halt when the three Dukies once accused of doing all sorts of nasty things to a stripper were un-accused by the North Carolina attorney general, who then waved his finger in the general direction of the district attorney who brought the charges. The players, it appears, only committed the moral crime of putting dollar bills in inappropriate places.

In baseball, some (like me) accuse MLB commissioner Bud Selig — he of the $14.5 million salary — of being either a money-grubbing miser or foul excuse for an idiot, especially after the league scheduled two American League West teams to play in Cleveland in the first week of April — only to reschedule them in equally-cold Milwaukee (where Selig owns the franchise, stadium and God-knows-what-else) when northern Ohio was blanketed in snow.

Whew. Deep breath.

Here in the northern San Joaquin Valley, accusations are flying, albeit a bit more slowly. In Stockton, two Franklin High baseball coaches received suspensions after they affixed their names to a letter to the editor decrying the (horrible) state of their fields (Stockton Unified School District is no angel, but it’s a good thing they don’t work here in Tracy), and the Tri-City Athletic League breathed a collective sigh of something when, in all their benevolence, the St. Mary’s girls basketball team elected to not go and find some real competition in a different league — yet.

In sports, like in life, when you break a rule or do something “bad,” you typically receive an appropriate penalty. But that’s the rub — it’s appropriate. The punishment’s supposed to fit the crime. Did these? Let’s take a case-by-case look:

Imus protest?

Don “I’m not a racist, I just play one on the radio” Imus — the shock-jock, who used to work in Stockton until he was fired for being (I assume) an annoying loudmouth 40 years ago — has been pilloried by everyone from Al Sharpton to Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton after piggybacking on a comment from his producer, Bernard McGuirk, who called the women from New Jersey “hard-core hos.”

Imus jumped in, calling them “nappy-headed hos.” Now, I’ve been to northern New Jersey. It’s what you call a tough neck of the woods. But Imus’ words are akin to me using the exact same words to describe a team from Edison High. Wrong move, bud.

Verdict: Imus should be locked up in a soundproof booth until Doomsday, and his producer should be forced to pick up trash on Charter Way — while wearing a white hood.

No Funny-business League?

The NFL suspends Adam “Pacman” Jones for the entire 2007 season and Chris Henry for eight games, for conduct detrimental to advertisers. Here, the conservative NFL shows its true colors.

While Pacman Jones and Chris Henry do seem like class-A punks — Jones (and his requisite posse) for molesting strippers and shooting off firearms and Henry for accruing enough drug and alcohol charges to embarrass Hunter Thompson — the league shows it cares far more about the almighty dollar than anything.

Darrent Williams was shot dead Jan. 1, and the league is more concerned with making sure the advertisers stay happy than taking care of its own. You and I will watch the NFL on Sundays no matter what, but Ford and Nike will pull out if things don’t shape up. Guess who matters more?

Verdict: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should “make it rain” in Colorado until Williams’s murderer is found. For good measure, Ford should sponsor the grand jury.

And since we’re out of room, one more:

Speak the truth?

You can’t state the obvious in Stockton — the St. Mary’s Rams girls basketball team will continue subjecting local teams to severe beatings in preparation for the inevitable losses in the NorCal and Section playoffs, while Franklin High is, apparently, lightning-quick to clap a stopper over coaches sick of playing knee-deep in weeds or on rocky dirtpiles. Wrong, oh so wrong.

Verdict: To even things out, the St. Mary’s football team will play their Tri-City Athletic League schedule without cleats or helmets and on concrete, while the Lincoln Unified School District Trojans and SUSD Yellowjackets will switch fields for the rest of the century. That’ll make for interesting bus rides, if nothing else.

 To contact Sports Editor Christopher H. Roberts about his column, which runs every Wednesday, e-mail croberts@tracypress.com.