So, what have we learned?

Yup, you guessed it. It's time for a final. It doesn't matter how long you've been here. One year, five years. Everyone's grade will count the same. Don't worry, because of the turnaround time before I have to get the grades to the dean (and because this paper has a circulation of 20,000 - so much for small classes), it's just one question long. One multiple choice question. I'll even help.

The question is: "What is the best way to describe collegiate athletics as we know it today?"

a) In sport, there is winning and misery. Current Miami Heat coach Pat Riley said this gem after his New York Knicks lost Game 7 of the NBA Finals to the Houston Rockets three years ago. For its brevity, there is probably no better descripti on of the life of the professional athlete. But, of course, it does not apply to the realm of the collegiate athlete. College sports are not about winning and losing, but about growing and blossoming into adults. Right?

Get real.

Anyone who was in the locker room following the UA men's basketball team's loss to UCLA in Pauley Pavilion this season could see the pain in the eyes of the players. The fact that despite all the work they had done on the season, that the game was once ag ain being decided by the referee's whistle, was probably a little much to deal with. Going back a year, the football team's loss to Colorado State - a loss that ended the Wildcats' perfect season - is another example. If you listened to tight end Lamar Ha rris talk long enough in that locker room after the defeat, even the most cynical would have been close to tears. He vowed the team would come back from the loss because he never wanted to experience that feeling again. "It's sick," he said. A loss was "t he worst thing to take."

The team found out this year, however, that a loss on the field is not the worst thing to take. A loss of one of your friends, in this case tight end Damon Terrell, is.

b) It's just a game. In the end, that is what sports are. Just games. UA football coach Dick Tomey skipped a game this year to attend Terrell's funeral. His team lost, but so what, the point was made. There is the story of the sportscaster w ho offered to donate the time sports got in the nightly news in order to give more coverage to the Gulf War, which had begun that day. This is what usually happens when a real-life crisis comes up, sports gets pushed into the background. But without a rea l-life crisis, is it still just a game?

From an economic standpoint, the answer is a resounding no. The "big two" of college sports, football and men's basketball, are starting to resemble minor leagues for their counterparts in the pros - not only because college athletes are staying in school less and less often before jumping to the NBA or NFL (now it is not even surprising when a player skips college altogether), but because college sports are big-time profit makers. With the television contracts and endorsements available to just about eve ryone (except college athletes, of course), and the money tied up in tournaments and bowl games, it is not just a game, but a way of supporting thousands of workers.

If it was just a game, would the UCLA softball team have brought in a ringer from Australia, Tonya Harding, to play in the final half of its season last year and pitch the Bruins to a narrow win over Arizona in the NCAA title game, and then have her myste riously drop out of school and go back to Australia without finishing any classes?

If it was just a game, why did that sportcaster's news director refuse the offer to not air sports?

c) Think where man's glory begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends. Excuse Irish post W.B. Yeats for the gender bias, but there is a point in this phrase. One of my most vivid memories is of an NCAA Tournament game a few yea rs ago. Western Kentucky was the Cinderella team that year, and advanced to the Sweet 16 against Florida State. Down the entire game, a last-second Hilltopper shot to win the game against the Seminoles bounced mercilessly around the rim several times befo re cruelly falling away. But the Hilltoppers did a funny thing afterwards: They joined each other arm-in-arm and walked off the court. Despite the loss, which could have been pinned on several factors and several plays, no one on that team walked off the court alone.

Friends, I think, are the best part of college sports. To see the interaction between teammates - the UA softball players chanting in the dugout at Hillenbrand Memorial Stadium, members of the swimming teams getting paddled by kickboards from their teamma tes on their birthdays - you know there is something going on there besides winning and losing.

It's probably no different than another club or group on campus. Friendships develop because of working toward a common goal, whether that goal is a Pacific 10 Conference title, or a good newspaper, or increasing recycling on campus. The main difference f or athletes being that they sometimes work toward their goals in front of 50,000 screaming, unforgiving fans.

d)All of the above. What would a multiple-choice test be without this cop-out? But in this case, the cop-out is the right answer. For better or worse, college sports are part winning at all cost, part children's activities and part making fr iends. The goal of everyone is to make sure college athletics stays more the last two and less the first one.

Class dismissed, and take care.

Patrick Klein is a graduating senior and the sports editor of the Arizona Daily Wildcat. He would like to wish everyone nothing but the best in the coming years, especially those he had the privilege of working with these past four years at the news paper.