Lew Perkins is going to need an awfully big steak to remove the black eye that now looms large on the face of the University of Kansas Athletics Department.

Local authorities still haven’t finished their investigation of the infamous Moon Bar fight, but it doesn’t really matter what the police report says.

Sure, J.R. Giddens may avoid criminal charges for his role in the brawl, and stay on the basketball team, but not even the best public relations spin will make him look like an innocent bystander.

Nor will it cover up the fact that Giddens’ poor decision making means that players on three of the University’s major sports teams were involved in a criminal altercation of some kind over the past year.

First, the Jayhawk baseball team made the news when pitcher Scott Sharpe faced battery charges after a fight in early March.

The football team followed suit when former running back John Randle was arrested for using the Granada as a toilet and punching a man in the face. That, of course, was his fourth arrest in an 18-month span.

Then the men’s basketball team threw its hat in the crime ring when Giddens, along with C.J. Giles and Bryant Nash, took part in a melee outside the Moon Bar, which left Giddens with a severed artery in his calf.

The first two incidents did little to hurt the University’s image. The Sharpe story disappeared in a few days, and Randle was labeled as the bad apple in an otherwise good bunch.

But Giddens being stabbed, coupled with slow summer sports news and the national exposure that comes with the Kansas basketball team, has created one ugly mess.

Even if it turns out that Giddens was the victim in the melee, this story won’t be going away soon.

This isn’t equivalent to Paul Pierce, NBA All-Star and former Kansas basketball stud, being stabbed in the back multiple times at a Boston bar and turning into a local hero after his recovery.

Opposing fans already taunt Giddens with Wal-Mart sacks. One can only imagine what next year’s trip to Missouri will look like.

It’s a shame too, because this all could have been avoided with some stricter rules from the coaching staff. How these athletes were allowed to be bar-hopping past two in the morning on a Wednesday night, where something like this could happen, escapes me.

I understand that controlling over a dozen college students is a difficult task, but shouldn’t players representing the University’s proudest athletic program at least be barred from bars until they are of legal drinking age?

Maybe alcohol wasn’t the primary cause of this incident. We might never know. But when the facts finally come out I hope Perkins sends all his coaches the message that this type of behavior can’t continue.

Otherwise we might see him in Amarillo, Texas, buying a 72 ounce steak at the Big Texan Restaurant. If the black eye gets any bigger, that may be the only piece of meat that can help.