If the identity of the college game is built upon coaches who cannot cut it in the NBA, where does that leave the college game?

With six times as many active Hall of Fame coaches as there are in the NBA, that’s where.

We know because we checked during the saga of Billy Donovan, after reading over and again that he was doomed for failure if he left college coaching for the Orlando Magic or destined for immortality if he returned with the Florida Gators. According to popular opinion, Donovan either was setting himself up either to become coaching’s next John Wooden or Mike Krzyzewski or its next (choose your favorite prodigal college coach here) Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Leonard Hamilton, Lon Kruger or Tim Floyd.

There’s an interesting paradox in there – this perception that the top college coaches are not NBA material, yet more Hall-worthy than their pro counterparts.

There are plenty of politically correct explanations why the college coach has not enjoyed more professional success. College coaches have been given bad NBA teams. College coaches are entering such a different game, such a different world, they might as well try coaching football or baseball, instead. The college coach has a more difficult time initially earning the NBA player’s respect.

There’s also that unspoken perception that the best college coaches simply must not be sophisticated enough to X and O on the NBA level.

Few examples exist of high-level NBA coaches who tried to make it on the college level because, for some reason, the Phil Jacksons and Gregg Popoviches of the world aren’t leaping at the chance to take a huge paycut to enter the college game. There are a couple that would suggest the transition is just as hard in reverse. Butch Beard couldn’t get it done at Morgan State. Bob Hill couldn’t win at Fordham. That’s Morgan State and Fordham, you say. Todd Bozeman won more games in his first season at Morgan State (13) than Beard won in four of his five years there. Compare the elevator that Fordham is riding under Dereck Whittenberg (from 6 to 13 to 16 to 18 victories) to the out-of-control spiral it was in under Hill (from 14 to 12 to 8 to 2 victories).

On the flip side, there’s Jeff Bzdelik. The former Denver Nuggets coach did so well in his transition from the NBA to Air Force, he’s now the first-year coach at Colorado.

Then again, the college game can counter with Popovich, a sub-.500 coach at Division III Pomona-Pitzer who just won his fourth NBA title with the San Antonio Spurs. Taking the debate to its absurd conclusion, NBA general managers ought to be beating down Division III rather than Division I doors in search of future coaches.

And so on. Maybe there just isn’t enough empirical evidence either way. College coaches might simply be as over-represented by the Hall as NBA coaches are under-recognized.

Never have so many active college coaches been enshrined in Springfield as there will be when Roy Williams becomes a member of the Class of 2007 next September. Williams will bring the current number to six, along with Krzyzewski, Bob Knight, Lute Olson, Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun, matching the all-time high from just a couple of years ago, before John Chaney retired from Temple.

Goodness, nothing against the women’s game, but there are four times as many active college women’s coaches (Pat Summitt, Geno Auriemma, Kay Yow and Van Chancellor) in the Hall of Fame as there will be NBA coaches once Jackson is inducted.

There are logical reasons why college coaches are so well-represented. It’s old news to point out that in a game that turns its players over every four years, the college coach has always provided the continuity and been considered the star of the show. It’s even more true today. As the college shelf lives of players dwindle to maybe three months or less from the time they are identified as stars, programs find themselves with little to sell but the name of the coach and the school.

Marketing departments can sell Thad Matta, for example, much easier than Greg Oden’s successor, whomever that might be. That’s true as well for a Hall that’s taken heat for ignoring the college game. Though the logic is specious, Springfield has less ’splaining to do by selecting Roy Williams than it would by choosing players such as Christian Laettner or Ralph Sampson, whose college success didn’t translate to the NBA.

Meanwhile, getting into the Hall as an NBA coach is roughly the equivalent of a Laettner or Sampson making it on his college credentials. There are a few logical reasons for that, too.

First of all, the Hall requires 25 years of experience for any coach. Since the typical NBA coach first had a professional playing career, he often must remain active into his 60s just to be considered. And if he is still an active coach, it probably won’t be for long.

Next, the NBA coach must be recognized in a player’s league full of stars – no easy thing. Popovich and Pat Riley soon will be invited into the Hall. Jerry Sloan comes up for consideration soon, as well. Don Nelson, named one of the NBA’s top 10 coaches all-time, was passed over by the Hall in 2006.

Finally, the NBA coach must continually win in a highly competitive league of 30, which isn’t the same as winning in college’s uneven landscape of more than 300 schools.

The college coach who hasn’t been called a great coach by someone, at some time, must be one shlub of a college coach. For starters among active coaches, there are the half-dozen Hall of Famers. A next wave for consideration would include Donovan, Pitino Tom Izzo. There’s Calipari, Ben Howland and Bob Huggins and a hot list including Matta, Floyd, John Thompson III, Billy Gillispie, Bill Self, Jay Wright, Bruce Pearl, Mark Few, Tom Crean and Jamie Dixon. There are your teacher/strategists – Bo Ryan, Al Skinner and John Beilein – who always seem to get more from less. Tubby Smith, Rick Majerus, Gary Williams, Rick Barnes and Kelvin Sampson belong in there somewhere. That’s 30 names, right there.

Now put those 30 coaches and their teams in the same league, without opportunity for non-conference games, and see which 20 or 25 become lousy coaches in a hurry. That’s life as an NBA coach.

We’ll probably never know now how Donovan would have done in an NBA setting, which is fine. Some things, we just don’t need to know.

It could have gone either way. Though winning a second national title practically ensures Donovan’s place in the Hall of Fame – among the 11 other coaches who won two titles, only Ed Jucker (who, coincidentally, left Cincinnati’s Bearcats to coach the NBA’s Royals) was denied a place in the Hall – we’re less certain than others seem to be that Donovan is headed for a place next to Wooden in college coaching’s all-time hierarchy. Nothing against Donovan, who’s still very young and everything, but the future holds no such certainties.

Look, the 42-year-old Donovan deserves every accolade he has received. Only two coaches – Knight and Phil Woolpert – have won a second national title at an earlier age than Donovan, who also took the Gators to the 2000 championship game. From here on, he can build on the sort of cache that only back-to-back titles can bring. He won his titles with one of his least-heralded recruiting classes, and they proved to be as unselfish off the court as they were on it. They not only made the extra pass, they played the extra season. Before his first championship season, Donovan told me that he believed that he was over-rated as a recruiter and under-rated as a teacher and bench coach. Fifteen months later, he had proved at least the latter half of that statement to be correct.

But, lest we forget, Billy Donovan has never even been a national coach of the year. Hell, he’s never been the Southeastern Conference coach of the year. During the five years before these 15 months or so that Donovan has been viewed in such a shining light, he was One-and-Donovan, the nation’s most under-achieving coach in the NCAA Tournament – which is fair, since it’s the same standard by which he has been judged following these past two seasons. The Gators never got beyond the second round from 2001-05, though they were seeded fifth or better in each of those seasons, getting upset by a pair of No. 12 seeds (Creighton in 2002 and Manhattan in 2004) and an 11th-seeded Temple in 2001. The extra pass? Not so much. The extra season? Christian Drejer left Donovan’s Gators in mid-season.

Was Donovan a bad coach back then? Of course not. He was the same guy that he is now, but without the two national titles for credibility.

Donovan ultimately decided for himself that he wasn’t NBA material. A place in the Hall is already being made for Donovan, if not necessarily next to Wooden just yet.