From kindergarten to graduation day, almost every educational activity is an object lesson in cause and effect.

Don’t brush and floss and your teeth will rot. Don’t eat right and exercise and you’ll get fat.

Be a class clown and you’ll lose recess. Treat people with respect or disrespect and it’ll come back tenfold.

Go to every practice, listen to your coach and you’ll be a success on the playing field. Mix two volatile chemicals and the building will be evacuated. Show more interest in sports, cars and girls than calculus and you’ll grow old as a starving sportswriter.

And so it goes. We may not always reap what we sow, but we do live in a world that is still at least hypothetically about production.

Which is why I don’t understand how there is any debate about the dismissal of University of Maine women’s basketball coach Cindy Blodgett.

More specifically, Blodgett’s assertion and the conviction of a few ardent, lifelong followers that she was fired without cause is mystifying.

What part of “cause” don’t I understand?

The coaching business is no respecter of persons. It doesn’t make exceptions for legendary, retired players who once captivated a state, or even a nation.

Lose, lose frequently, lose royally and you get canned.

Blodgett was 4-25 in her just-completed fourth season.

Four years, in a women’s basketball world where players rarely redshirt, is a complete life cycle. Generally speaking, that’s enough time for a coach to see his or her first recruiting class through to graduation.

Maine went 24-94 in that quadrennium — a winning percentage of .203. Sorry, but the only sports personalities who ever became famous for hitting .203 were Dave Kingman, Bob Uecker and Mario Mendoza.

The Black Bears couldn’t buy wins in America East, a league they dominated through three decades and a name change or two.

In what had become a rite of spring, players suddenly decided that either the school or the rigors of Division I basketball weren’t for them. We’re talking starters and people who were once marquee recruits, not walk-ons and disgruntled wannabes.

Once the No. 3 women’s basketball program in New England behind Connecticut and Boston College, Maine had unraveled into a doormat on the court and a soap opera off it.

Freshly minted athletic director Steve Abbott had no choice. If he didn’t cut Blodgett loose as the first maneuver of his tenure, it was he, not she, who would have looked ineffective and overmatched.

During Thursday’s awkward soliloquy at a Bangor pub, Blodgett alleged that Abbott is inexperienced. She wondered aloud why she wasn’t granted one more year to restore order in the house that she helped build as a player.

I’ve heard that line from Blodgett’s fan club, too. There’s an implication that Maine women’s basketball somehow didn’t exist before a certain curly-haired assassin went to Orono and chalked up 3,005 points and four NCAA tournament appearances.

History tells us otherwise.

Women’s basketball was a different enterprise in the 1970s and ‘80s. It didn’t occupy nearly equal time on ESPN or move the needle on the casual fan’s give-a-crap meter.

The tournament hadn’t yet grown into a 64-team hootenanny, and tiny leagues such as the North Atlantic Conference didn’t even merit an automatic berth.

But Maine was regionally relevant and very, very good.

Eilene Fox was 115-50 in eight years as coach. Although his tenure ended under the cloud of off-court allegations, Orono native Peter Gavett averaged 21 wins in his five seasons. Trish Roberts, most recently the coach at Stony Brook, was 82-32 and led the Black Bears to their first berth in the Women’s NIT.

Believing that Maine women’s hoop didn’t exist before Joanne Palombo McCallie and Cindy Blodgett is like pretending there was no NFL before the Super Bowl era.

That coach-player combination was a perfect storm, arriving just as UConn and Tennessee were bringing the women’s game into the mainstream. Maine already had a following and an identity. Blodgett and Coach P may have expanded that fan base, but they didn’t build it.

Sadly, after two disastrous years of Ann McInerney and a four-year elevator ride to rock bottom under Blodgett, that house needs to be completely rebuilt.

It will require a coach with experience, estimable recruiting and communication skills and sound judgment.

The record and the revolving door show that Blodgett fell shy in each category. And with her rambling, unfortunate parting shot Thursday, she forever damned herself in the judgment column.

Sometimes silence is golden. There’s something to be said for walking away with dignity and class. Instead, Blodgett made it unlikely that she will get the chance to rebuild her resume as head coach at a Division II or III program or as a D-I assistant anytime soon.

There’s that pesky cause and effect, again.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].