It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, we’re told. The costs of doing business in this country include — along with Economics 101’s land, labor and capital — huge sacrifices of time and money, which lead to sacrifices of sleep, family and life. This is called “doing what it takes to get ahead and to stay ahead.”

Cases of corruption and fraud are a good indication of the degree of head-to-head competition in the United States.

Business execs in any industry would argue for their professions as being the most cutthroat, but it’s hard for any of their arguments to stand up to college sports, football in particular.

One winner, one loser in every game — and sometimes even the winners lose; Frank Solich comes to mind. Iowa State proved you can go from winner to big-time loser in an eyeblink, and even traditional winners like Notre Dame have suffered from mismanagement and became losers.

That ultra-high level of competition is the only possible explanation for the ugliness playing out now in Boulder, Colo., where each day seems to bring a new allegation that the University of Colorado uses sex parties to recruit football players.

Any rape or other form of sexual abuse is deplorable — unthinkably so when it’s done in the name of winning a football game or two. Boulder County District Attorney Mary Keenan may be the damning witness in eventual trials, if her version of the attitudes of Colorado Athletics Director Dick Tharp and football coach Gary Barnett is correct, as reported by the Associated Press:

“They decided, after discussing the history, that they would not change anything because they could not afford to lose the competitive edge against universities such as Oklahoma (and) Nebraska.”

Barnett and Tharp both denied Keenan’s charge, but the issue has now erupted into a full-fledged scandal, with:

* An independent commission preparing to investigate how Colorado has addressed allegations,

* Gov. Bill Owens saying in no uncertain terms he’ll correct the problems if the university doesn’t and

* A slew of lawsuits alleging rape ready to go to court — not to mention former Colorado placekicker Katie Hnida’s Tuesday statement that she was raped by teammates when she played for the Buffs.

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to say “this could happen anywhere” — most schools, one would hope, have the trace amount of integrity it would take to prevent this type of “recruiting” from happening.

Yet, it’s hard to escape the fact that schools do — nay, are forced to —cut corners and continually one-up one another in the race for the top high school players. Those cut corners probably aren’t “sex parties” in most cases, but certainly the numerous accounts of payoffs by boosters to recruits and their families aren’t totally false. Certainly, it’s difficult for most people to pass 24 hours worth of courses in a single summer session, as former Missouri men’s basketball player Ricky Clemons apparently did a couple summers ago (he wasn’t the first, either).

There’s plenty of funny business to go around. The question becomes: Is the cheating and law-breaking necessary in order to do a good job recruiting?

Well, no, of course not — but that’s a long way from being convincing. Part of the problem is that recruiting’s nature invites secrecy, which invites bent rules — coaches on the road for days at a time, meeting in living rooms and outside schools, desperately trying to sell schools that, in a lot of cases, don’t have much in the way of selling points. When journalists report on recruiting, we find that every recruit loves the school we’re calling about — how else do you answer the question, “What did you think of Coach X and ABC U.?”

If we can’t often find the truth about that aspect, it’s hard to believe we’re hearing the truth about much anything involving the recruiting process.

Rules are being broken — how many, nobody could know. A lot of college programs are run properly by decent people without a hint of trouble.

But, during a great down-to-the-wire battle, it’s easy to forget (or ignore) college sports’ tainting with academic fraud and illegal pay to athletes piled on top of generous scholarships in the name of keeping up with Oklahoma and Nebraska.

All this recruiting mess made you shake your head, but it was never funny, and now it’s impossible to ignore. The Colorado case simply has to do something to change the at-any-cost college recruiting atmosphere.