Even if you think the recommendations made Wednesday by the NCAA Commission on College Basketball are too little, too late, as do many in the media, you at least have to admire the honesty and frankness of the 53-page report.

The authors stated plainly that cheating has been going on for decades, and that everyone in the game knew it, including the NCAA.

“The environment surrounding college basketball is a toxic mix of perverse incentives to cheat,” the commissioners wrote. The NCAA enforcement process “has little credibility with the public and its members, and what it has continues to dwindle.”

In six months of interviewing hundreds of stakeholders, the commission wrote that hardly anyone was surprised when the FBI arrested 10 people last year for alleged crimes related to recruiting. Most “uttered the discouraging phrase: Everyone knows what’s been going on.”

“Where an entire community is aware of substantial rule-breaking and the governance body fails to act, the result is cynicism and contempt.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert commissioned the report and deserves praise for challenging the commission, headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to make daring recommendations. He selected a distinguished panel that included former basketball stars Grant Hill and David Robinson and Notre Dame President John Jenkins.

But he and the entire NCAA bureaucracy should be ashamed that it took an FBI investigation to force them to this point.

The report is comprehensive and bold. If all the recommendations were enacted, it would improve the game. It won’t fix everything, but would make a good start toward cleaning up a mess the NCAA allowed to fester for years.

Most importantly, the commission recommended radical changes in how the NCAA investigates alleged wrongdoing. It said the NCAA should hire independent investigators to look into serious NCAA violations and hire an independent panel to judge whether rules were broken.

That would take the enforcement process out of the hands of presidents, athletic directors, conference commissioners and others who now are passing judgment on their peers and/or friends.

And as for penalties, commissioners wrote that the current risks for violating rules are too small – and the potential rewards too great – for them to deter bad behavior. It said Level I violations, which include academic fraud or the lack of institutional control, should potentially result in a five-year postseason ban and the loss of all revenue sharing from the NCAA for five years.

A five-year ban would make coaches and others think longer and harder about looking the other way.

Old Dominion President John Broderick, whose basketball program has never been sanctioned by the NCAA, said “I do not see one recommendation that I cannot support,” and that’s good news.

“As with any implementation or rule change, there will be some tweaks. I see considerable merit, for example, with the increasing consequences when coaches and programs go astray – such as tournament eligibility and loss of revenue.”

North Carolina’s academic scandal, in which hundreds of athletes got credit for term papers graded by athletic officials, and for which no class attendance was mandatory, was mentioned only in a footnote.

But the commission made apparent reference to UNC when it wrote that schools should no longer “defend fraud or misconduct cases on the ground that all students, not just athletes, were permitted to benefit from that fraud or misconduct. Coaches, athletic directors and university presidents must be held accountable for academic fraud about which they knew or should have known.”

The commission called for the NBA to allow high school seniors be eligible to play professionally right away, and thus do away with the “one-and-done” recruiting scenario that has become so prevalent at some schools. And while the NCAA can’t require the NBA to do anything, I think public pressure will persuade the league to do the right thing.

In some areas, the commission’s recommendations may not go far enough. The involvement of apparel companies and AAU and other youth basketball organizations has corrupted the game. Adidas has been charged with bribing coaches and families of teenage players.

The commission recommended the NCAA begin holding regional and national camps and force other non-high school camps to open their books to the NCAA. It also recommends that the NCAA pressure Adidas, Nike and Under Armour to open their books to the NCAA and that youth basketball tournaments be subject to more NCAA oversight.

That won’t be enough to rid the recruiting process of third parties, but it’s better than what we have now.

Emmert says he wants new rules in place by this fall. He’s just one voice, but there is immense pressure from all corners, including Congress, to do something.

That pressure was apparent when The Sporting News reported Tuesday that the National Association of Basketball Coaches sent an email to every Division I coach, saying “It is imperative that the Commission’s recommendations be met with unequivocal support from each of us.”

The NCAA has looked the other way for years while corruption expanded in college basketball.

If the NCAA dawdles or adopts a watered-down version of these recommendations, it will have again shown it is incapable of regulating college athletics.