That grinding you hear is the sound of the NCAA battling to retake control of college sports by reviving the university administrations’ involvement in the games. The process is wrenching and contentious.

Last week the NCAA released the National Study on College Sports Wagering and Associated Health Risks. Fancy name, frightening results.

Twenty-one thousand college athletes were involved in the study. Thirty-five percent of the males and 10 percent of the females said they bet on college sports.

Approximately 1.1 percent of Division I football players said they took money to affect a game. Read that last sentence again. The breakdown means that one person for every team, on average, took such money. Mercy.

More than twice as many, 2.3 percent of Division I football players, said they were approached to throw a game for money.

Myles Brand, NCAA president, said, “The scope of sports wagering among intercollegiate student athletes is startling and disturbing.” Let’s add to that, “And a whole lot more.”

This week the University of Colorado released its report on the recruiting scandal in its football program that included the use of drugs, alcohol, and sex to lure high school recruits.

The report said, “The university’s leadership must be held accountable for systemic failings that jeopardized students’ safety and allowed for ongoing misconduct in the football recruiting program.”

Brand responded by saying, “I believe the athletic director should report directly to the person who is in charge of the campus or president and sit on the president’s council.” Read that to mean, sports departments are not islands.

On Tuesday, a congressional committee reviewing NCAA-proposed changes in recruiting standards called for more control of the process by the NCAA. That’s a call contrary to decades of athletic directors and coaches saying the NCAA is too involved.

That committee is also looking at NCAA proposals that call for penalizing schools where athletes do not meet academic criteria, those criteria also being under review by the NCAA.

There is nothing easy about this multi-tentacle process. College sports is out of control in so many ways that grabbing the tube at one end only releases a different ooze from the other end.

Yet, it is a battle that must be fought and won if sports are to have anything to do with the colleges and the institutions it supposedly represents. The NCAA obviously does not want Congress involved in the rulemaking, so it has the lead foot on the accelerator trying to clean up the mess before Congress deems action necessary.

For now, every report is a bummer because decades of slimy activity has to be exposed before the correction process can take hold. Brand, his NCAA cohorts, and college presidents must keep the mainsails intact because this storm is worth fighting through.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.