Too bad Larry Eustachy can't hit the open jumper.

	Larry Eustachy, with wife Stacy on Wednesday, may not be back at Iowa State, which made a business decision in suspending its head coach.

If he could, or if Eustachy was a monster on the boards or the Big 12 defensive player of the year or the engine that drove a conference champion, then what you'd be hearing today would be the talk of second chances. It's human to make mistakes, after all. Everybody deserves a shot at turning things around in his life.

Do you know why you'd be hearing that talk? Because it'd be good business, is why.

And make no mistake: The movement at Iowa State to whack Eustachy, while it has as its subtext human failure and the uncertainty of redemption and the master screws of pressure and any other element of tragic literature you'd care to throw against a wall -- while it has all of that, the movement to force Eustachy out is strictly grounded in business.

We can discuss every angle of it. But it's business all the same.

Can you imagine the levels of hypocrisy being practiced here? It's almost no use going into, because the conversation would last all day. Put it this way: There is something consistently amazing about elected officials, newspaper editorial boards and university bigwigs stepping forward to pronounce in serious tones upon the moral fabric of our society in the wake of a coach making the campus rounds. No glass houses in those neighborhoods, one supposes.

With that duly noted, Eustachy has dug his own ditch. It's no sense defending it on any grounds. He says he's an alcoholic, that he realizes he needs help; and only a career churl would stop and point out that Eustachy's self-awareness kicked in after it became obvious the Des Moines Register had the goods on him and planned to publish them.

But what if this were an Iowa State player rather than the coach? If we can use history as any guide, that player would be directed into a rehab program, remain on scholarship and welcomed back with open arms -- so long as he could still play. If, on the other hand, his usefulness were deemed to be at an end, then hail, good luck and farewell. It was nice watchin' ya.

This isn't Iowa State we're talking about; this is college sports at the high-stakes Division I level. No, Iowa State's problem was both more immediate and more vexing: It had to decide how much of a business hit it could afford to take.

Clearly, the administration decided the hit was too large. That's business. What the athletic director in particular concluded was that Eustachy had done too much damage to his and the program's recruiting ability for him to be allowed to continue.

Eustachy's collection of party hats was going to be the rallying cry for every coach who was trying to steal a recruit away from Iowa State or hang on to one whom Eustachy was pursuing. It would be the focal point of a campaign to reduce the Cyclones in the court of public opinion, to sweep ISU back to the old days of being ignored altogether unless one of Johnny Orr's teams was scalding hot. Having seen Eustachy guide the program to its awesome recent heights, no one around Ames was eager to see the downslope so quickly.

Pure calculation -- and don't think Eustachy isn't acquainted with the business concept. He conducted a news conference at which he sounded contrite, yet made it clear he would not be resigning -- and he did this within a few hours of being notified that Iowa State would move to fire him.

That, boys and girls, is pouring the foundation for a lawsuit, and with Eustachy earning more than $1 million per year and contracted through the 2010-11 season, we can think of lots of zeroes -- er, reasons -- why such a foundation might be poured.

It's business. To repeat: It's not personal, it's business. This is Iowa State calculating the damage and acting upon its calculation. It has nothing to do with whether a 47-year-old coach can get his act together. It has nothing to do with the value of forgiveness, with the quality of accountability, with the vagaries of pressure (and believe it, every coach in history has found some way or other to deal with that pressure), or any of the other themes that might resonate through this story.

It doesn't even have to do with whether Larry Eustachy will get another chance. You already know he will. He is an extremely successful former national coach of the year. Give it six months. Heck, give it three. A truckload of guys with seedier backgrounds are roaming D-I sidelines right this minute. A reformed drinker won't exactly wreck the curve.

He will be back, Eustachy. He just won't be back at Iowa State, not if the university's position prevails. Probably a whole bunch of people hate to see it happen. But that's business.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com