All that would be required to have an adequately financed men’s basketball program at the University of Minnesota would be to apply a $1 surcharge on local sports fans for every time they utter the phrase: “The Barn is a great arena when it’s full.”

We are now a quarter-century removed from that occurring on a regular basis. This coincides with the decision to send the Gophers’ last dynamic head coach, Clem Haskins, back to Kentucky in the summer of 1999.

The cause was an academic fraud “scandal,” worth a Pulitzer Prize to the St. Paul Pioneer Press then, worth a couple of paragraphs in a roundup of Associated Press sports news today.

That’s why the official list of Turkey of the Year winners (dating to 1978) now has “vacated” for 1999, when the cowardly Turkey Chairman joined the groundswell and awarded the honor to Clem the Gem.

The official end of any connection between major conference basketball and academics came when Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski stopped bragging about the splendid graduation rate for his athletes and became the Second King of the One-and-Done Empire.

I mean, perhaps his most talented ever one-and-doner was Kyrie Irving, and he seemed to have left the academic powerhouse in Durham, N.C., with a belief that Earth was flat.

John Calipari had been the first One-and-Done king at Kentucky in 2012. What a fast-moving and strange journey it has been for college basketball since then, now including the immediately eligible transfer portal, purchasing players with name, image and likeness phoniness, and Eight-and-Done players such as the Gophers’ determined Parker Fox.

The same folks that still talk of the full-house grandeur of Williams Arena also seem to carry the opinion that the right coach to turn the Gophers into an exciting product again is out there, just waiting to be hired.

He’s not … not with a price tag the Gophers can handle in the athletic department’s current financial situation.

I happened across a TV contest the other night featuring Colorado State vs. New Mexico from Albuquerque. First thought: “Hey, the next Gophers coach, Niko Medved (CSU), against a previous Gophers coach, Richard Pitino (NM).”

This is based on Medved, 51, with success at Drake and then doing OK at Colorado State, having the profile of a coach that Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle would be interviewing if he chooses to fire Ben Johnson at the end of this season.

Final score: New Mexico 87, Colorado State 65.

Pitino had an eight-season run here and was fired after the 2020-21 season. He landed at New Mexico for an initial contract that paid him a miserly $900,000. He immediately pounded the transfer portal (including for the Gophers’ Jamal Mashburn Jr.) and has had success. Now, with new transfers, he’s leading the Mountain West and headed back to the NCAA tournament.

I’m the last person in Minnesota to say, “I told you so,” on Pitino. I didn’t think he had the résumé (only the name) to be hired as a 30-year-old by Norwood Teague, even in the AD’s desperation to get a replacement for fired Tubby Smith in 2013.

Pitino was known to tell confidantes (definitely not me) that he was mystified as to why so many Minnesotans thought this was a great job by Big Ten standards. And then he got fired here and — excluding pay — got a better job. Way better arena (the Pit), way better fan base and able to find much success in the transfer portal.

When Bill Musselman first turned the Gophers into must-see basketball in 1971, Williams Arena was 43 years old. The public and recruits still were familiar with arenas with bench seats and minimal conveniences.

The Barn nickname showed up after Mussy, it was reduced in size to mollify the fire marshal, and it has been modified slightly through the years. It will turn 100 in 2028, and that should be about the end.

On Monday, the arbitrators are expected to tell us whether Glen Taylor retains ownership of the Timberwolves or Mark Lore and Alex Rodriguez are entitled to get the club at what now would be a discount price.

Either way, Target Center is well behind the times as an NBA arena, and a modern replacement will be planned sooner rather than later.

Start with $700 million as seed money from team ownership and design a universal arena — where the Wolves could handle a crowd of 16,000, and it could seat a tidy 10,000 for the Gophers.

It would be 2030 before it’s ready. By then, you should be able to change the capacity with more than a curtain.

How about the students? Put the new arena in the same area. It would be nice to have somebody on those trains heading west to downtown.

As for Williams Arena, blow it up and pop for a 5,000-seat arena as St. Thomas is finishing on its campus — but without the need for ice.

Note: The Gophers had a decent crowd at Williams on Saturday. They were outclassed by Illinois 95-74, an Illini team not nearly the same powerhouse that won the Big Ten tournament last spring at Target Center.

Fire Johnson, you say, for not putting magic back in a Barn that lost it four coaches ago? And then Coyle could hire Medved, who lost by 22 this week to the coach the AD fired four years ago?

Sounds super.