Imagine a handful of NCAA employees standing around a fire hydrant, dutifully believing clean, fresh water is the only way to wash away the sins of the past.

So they crank open that hydrant and the rush of water, bursting with new life after lying dormant for more than 100 years, screams from its purgatory, reaching and flooding everything in sight.

And now they can’t turn it off.

“Just a really stupid system,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said.

Hang tight, bud. More stupid is around the corner.

The spring transfer portal opens April 16, and because the NCAA lost 2 critical court cases in the past 4 months, college football is on the verge of complete chaos.

Because after those 2 losses in court, there are no restrictions on the formation and foundation of NIL deals, and no restrictions on player movement.

Translation: When April 16 arrives, anyone can pay any player any amount of money, and any player can freely transfer to any other school — no matter how many times he has previously transferred.

Within the confines of the transfer portal, of course.

And by confines, I mean, one of the many bad decisions that continue to be implemented by a governing sports body that has no clue how to turn off the damn spigot.

There’s a 15-day “window” to enter the portal, but once you’re in, you don’t have to make a decision about where you’re playing until the first day of classes in August. The art of the deal, baby.

And if you think that’s stupid (it most certainly is), wait until teams/coaches desperate to win big and reach the Playoff and/or save their jobs begin tampering with other rosters and throw huge NIL deals at impact players to get them to flip.

It’s sort of like the OG of high school recruiting, prior to the new frontier of college sports — where late “flips” meant a player magically found a bag of cash in an Amazon locker. Allegedly.

Now players can openly and freely negotiate with other schools, and if you thought the past 3 years of change was the Wild, Wild West, wait until the spring transfer portal opens.

“I would say blatant cheating,” an SEC coach told Saturday Down South. “But there’s no such thing as cheating anymore. There are no rules.”

Beginning April 16, there will be — in the parlance of NFL free agency — legal tampering until the beginning of the 2024 season. Because there are no NCAA rules governing tampering, and the last thing the NCAA wants to do is try to legislate it and lose in court again.

So unhappy players — or just players who want a better financial deal — can shop themselves to the highest bidder. As long as they can academically move from one school to another, and classes they’ve taken can transfer, and they’re on track to graduate and stay eligible.

Because, you know, a school has to have standards after all.

Look, players earning off their name, image and likeness isn’t the problem. Unlimited free player movement is.

We saw the beginnings of this movement in January, when former Alabama offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor left the Tide for Iowa and signed an NIL deal to play for the Hawkeyes.

He enrolled in classes, and according to the Iowa Collective Swarm, “received a portion of his Swarm Inc., contracted payment from a sponsoring business.”

Then he told On3 that he was headed to the spring transfer portal, and would re-enroll at Alabama, no doubt with another healthy NIL deal.

This is the play now. If you’re not happy for whatever reason — financial or emotional — you walk and find another team/coach who makes you happy.

“It’s good for (players) financially,” Kiffin said. “I don’t know that it’s really good for them that they can leave every time something goes wrong. They’re just gonna run no matter what.”

But instead of proactively finding a way to control the looming storm, the NCAA doubles down with more reactive moves that will eventually lead to more problems. The latest idea: unlimited coaching staffs.

Because 10 assistant coaches isn’t enough, especially when you’re babysitting 85 players who may or may not bolt at any time. All in the name of player development, of course.

It’s all a shell game of procrastination. A stall tactic to avoid staring down the barrel of the inevitable.

There’s only one thing that fixes this mess, but that involves universities sharing billions in media rights revenue with players and finding a suitable employee/employer system that won’t be challenged in court every other month.

It’s utterly comical that college football has avoided sharing massive revenue deals since the explosion of media rights in the early 2000s. But instead of proactively doing the hard work to develop a logical and coherent system that includes collective bargaining, we’ll just keep reacting to the latest fire.

I can see the NCAA’s latest reactive move now: “Players who sign an NIL deal with a school must play for that school for at least 1 season.”

Yeah, that won’t lose in court, either.

For 3 years now, the NCAA — and by NCAA, I mean the collective universities — has avoided the inevitable with hope.

Hope that the NIL market will flatten, or that boosters will stop giving when they don’t see a favorable rate of return.

Hope that NIL and free player movement will keep players happy — and blissfully unaware of the annual billions on the table.

Hope isn’t a plan, everyone.

It’s like opening that fire hydrant and hoping it won’t flood and damage everything in sight once you can’t turn it off.

You can’t keep losing in court, over and over, and continue to expect different results. There’s only 1 way out of this mess for universities, one system that allows control of player movement — the contagion threatening the entire system.

Stop stalling and share revenue with the players.

That, or keep doubling down on stupid.