Rick Pitino, Louisville find new ways to fail in response to sex scandal

[Halldan1]

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...ce-again-response-ncaa-punishment-sex-scandal

• 
  
  Mark SchlabachESPN Senior Writer

Rick Pitino struck a defiant pose on Thursday in response to the punishment leveled by the NCAA for Louisville's sex-for-play scandal.

Anyone expecting contrition from Pitino was mistaken. And his bosses are standing beside him, vowing to overturn the punishment on appeal. It was a brazen response given the sordid details of the scandal and the weakness of the punishment.

Who are Pitino and Louisville kidding?

For hiring strippers and prostitutes to attend more than a dozen sex parties with recruits and players at an on-campus dormitory over a five-year period, Louisville was placed on four years' probation by the NCAA, and Pitino was suspended from coaching in the first five ACC games this coming season.

In addition to other penalties, the Cardinals were ordered to forfeit four scholarships (overall during the four-year probation) and may have to vacate as many as 108 regular-season victories and 15 NCAA tournament wins -- including their 2013 national championship.

For the sake of argument, let's take Pitino at his word and assume he didn't know about the parties. (McGee did not cooperate with the investigation, so we may never know his version of events.) That admission might be an even bigger indictment of the Hall of Fame coach. When you're being paid $5 million per year to coach basketball at a state university, you better know when something so disreputable is occurring within your program. And it's not as if strippers entertained Louisville's recruits and players only once.

Yet even after the NCAA delivered its punishment, Pitino wasn't ready to admit his program's shortcomings. His actions were more about protecting his image and legacy and making sure the 2013 national championship banner will still be hanging in the KFC Yum! Center for years to come.

And Jurich, who was once regarded as one of the country's top athletic directors, stood behind his coach once again. Jurich did the same thing eight years ago, when Pitino tried to make us all believe that he was the victim when a woman tried to extort him. Never mind that Pitino, who is married, had consensual sex with the woman in a restaurant and paid for her abortion.

Jurich also conveniently looked past Bobby Petrino's infamous motorcycle accident at Arkansas when the AD rehired Petrino as Louisville's football coach in 2014.

On Thursday, Jurich said the NCAA's penalties were more severe than he imagined.

"I didn't see this coming, to be perfectly candid with you," Jurich said.

Indeed, when you're blinded by success, it's hard to see reality.

Keep the banner. Keep the confetti. Watch reruns of your "One Shining Moment" DVD. Scrub away any asterisk next to the Cardinals' achievements from the period in question. Yes, Pitino and Louisville may yet win on appeal. But don't look for vindication.

After Thursday's response, that's been forfeited.

 

[NYShoreGuy]

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...ce-again-response-ncaa-punishment-sex-scandal

• 
  
  Mark SchlabachESPN Senior Writer

Rick Pitino struck a defiant pose on Thursday in response to the punishment leveled by the NCAA for Louisville's sex-for-play scandal.

Anyone expecting contrition from Pitino was mistaken. And his bosses are standing beside him, vowing to overturn the punishment on appeal. It was a brazen response given the sordid details of the scandal and the weakness of the punishment.

Who are Pitino and Louisville kidding?

For hiring strippers and prostitutes to attend more than a dozen sex parties with recruits and players at an on-campus dormitory over a five-year period, Louisville was placed on four years' probation by the NCAA, and Pitino was suspended from coaching in the first five ACC games this coming season.

In addition to other penalties, the Cardinals were ordered to forfeit four scholarships (overall during the four-year probation) and may have to vacate as many as 108 regular-season victories and 15 NCAA tournament wins -- including their 2013 national championship.

For the sake of argument, let's take Pitino at his word and assume he didn't know about the parties. (McGee did not cooperate with the investigation, so we may never know his version of events.) That admission might be an even bigger indictment of the Hall of Fame coach. When you're being paid $5 million per year to coach basketball at a state university, you better know when something so disreputable is occurring within your program. And it's not as if strippers entertained Louisville's recruits and players only once.

Yet even after the NCAA delivered its punishment, Pitino wasn't ready to admit his program's shortcomings. His actions were more about protecting his image and legacy and making sure the 2013 national championship banner will still be hanging in the KFC Yum! Center for years to come.

And Jurich, who was once regarded as one of the country's top athletic directors, stood behind his coach once again. Jurich did the same thing eight years ago, when Pitino tried to make us all believe that he was the victim when a woman tried to extort him. Never mind that Pitino, who is married, had consensual sex with the woman in a restaurant and paid for her abortion.

Jurich also conveniently looked past Bobby Petrino's infamous motorcycle accident at Arkansas when the AD rehired Petrino as Louisville's football coach in 2014.

On Thursday, Jurich said the NCAA's penalties were more severe than he imagined.

"I didn't see this coming, to be perfectly candid with you," Jurich said.

Indeed, when you're blinded by success, it's hard to see reality.

Keep the banner. Keep the confetti. Watch reruns of your "One Shining Moment" DVD. Scrub away any asterisk next to the Cardinals' achievements from the period in question. Yes, Pitino and Louisville may yet win on appeal. But don't look for vindication.

After Thursday's response, that's been forfeited.

 

[Vegas pj]

View embedded media

Guess Jay "Bias" would be happier if Tricky Ricky's suspension started against the cupcakes on the OOC schedule rather than against teams that matter.

 

[hallball]

Guess Jay "Bias" would be happier if Tricky Ricky's suspension started against the cupcakes on the OOC schedule rather than against teams that matter.

Isn't the Hall one of those OCC teams?

 

[lr591902]

Rick should not worry as we learned with Boeheim any losses during those do not count when they decide who to invite to the tournament.

 

[Halldan1]

Column: Rick Pitino’s plausible deniability could not save him, and that is how the NCAA wants it

By Rob Dauster
Jun 15, 2017, 7:18 PM EDT

Typically, when an NCAA investigation is looming and a head coach is pleading ignorance, claiming that it says nothing about the culture of his program and everything about a rogue staff member, that coach is, frankly, full of s***.

The term is plausible deniability.

Stay two steps away from the wrongdoing and they’ll never be able to connect you to it.

That is precisely what Rick Pitino has been saying and said again today, after the NCAA suspended him for the first five games of the ACC season and determined that they will be vacating 108 Louisville wins, including the 2013 national title. He had no idea that Andre McGee was bringing strippers and hookers in Billy Minardi Hall, and he had no idea that McGee was paying — more than $5,000 over the course of four years, according to the NCAA — for those strippers and hookers to provide “adult entertainment and/or sex acts” for three different players on the team and as many as 15 recruits, four of whom were 16 years old at the time.

And I believe him.

I believe every word he’s saying for no other reason than the fact that Pitino is not stupid and it would require him to be incredibly stupid to know that McGee was paying for strippers to dance for and hookers to have sex with members of his team, let alone with minors he was trying to entice to Louisville, and not put a stop to it.

Pitino is no angel. I’m not saying he is. But do you honestly believe that he would risk a job that pays him millions of dollars over this?

There’s no way.

What Pitino is guilty of is trusting the wrong man.

Because that is, essentially, what this comes down to.

Coaches intentionally keep themselves out of the loop when it comes to what happens with recruits on official visits, but typically that’s because the players on the team bring that kid along with them wherever they go that weekend. They’ll go to a few parties, have a few drinks, flirt with a few girls, maybe hit up a football tailgate. Think of what you do or did during a normal weekend in college, and that’s what these recruits do.

And those coaches don’t want to know about it just like Pitino didn’t want to know about it. They trust that the players on their team and the members of their staff coordinating the visits are smart enough to make sure the recruits don’t leave with anything other than a hangover.

Unfortunately for Pitino, this was not the case, but that does not matter.

“By his own admission, the head coach and his assistants did not interact with prospects from 10 p.m. until the next morning,” the NCAA said. “The panel noted that the head coach essentially placed a peer of the student-athletes in a position of authority over them and visiting prospects, and assumed that all would behave appropriately in an environment that was, for all practical purposes, a basketball dorm.”

“This arrangement played a role in creating a location where the former operations director’s activities went undetected.”

And as a result, Pitino pays the price for what happened in his program. That’s the way it worked for Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim and SMU head coach Larry Brown, who were both suspended for nine games for violations that occurred under their watch. Ole Miss football coach Hugh Freeze is probably going to end up feeling the NCAA’s wrath in the same way. Hell, Pitino got off light; he was only suspended for five games, and the NCAA accepted the program’s 2015-16 postseason ban. They’ll be able to play in the NCAA tournament this season.

So why is Pitino so mad?


Say goodbye to this (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

Because barring a successful appeal that does not appear to be all that likely, Louisville will be losing their 2012 trip to the Final Four and their 2013 national title, the first time in NCAA history that a national title will be vacated. He’ll no longer be able to claim that he’s one of 14 head coaches to win more than one national title. He’ll no longer see a 2013 National Champions banner hanging above the court in the Yum! Center. It won’t be on any Louisville programs. It will be scrubbed from Louisville’s website. They will no longer be able to make ‘2013 National Champions’ be one of the first things you see when you arrive at the Yum! Center.

Generally speaking, I think that vacating wins is the dumbest thing in the world. What this punishment is essentially saying is that Louisville didn’t actually win the games they won from Dec. 2010 through July 2014. That 2013 run to the national title is one I’ll never forget, from Kevin Ware’s broken leg in the Elite 8 to the show that freshman Spike Albrecht put on in the first half of the national title game.

That happened.

But in this specific instance, I think that vacating wins — specifically, vacating the national title — is the worst punishment that the NCAA can hand down.

Think about the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry for a second. Big picture. In 2009, when John Calipari — Pitino’s archnemesis — took over at Kentucky — Pitino’s old stomping grounds and his biggest rival at the new gig — the running joke was that it would only be a matter of time because Coach Cal got Kentucky in trouble, right? It was only a matter of time before he had Kentucky vacating Final Fours the way that he left Memphis and UMass with vacated Final Fours, yes?

Fast forward eight years, and it’s Pitino and Louisville, not Calipari and Kentucky, that will be taking down Final Four banners and vacating a national title.

That indignity is worse than any punishment the NCAA could have given out to the program itself, and given the magnitude of the violations in the NCAA’s eyes, that’s just the way that they wanted it to be.

So even if Pitino didn’t know about what McGee was doing, it doesn’t matter.

In the NCAA’s eyes, the buck stops with him.

Pitino’s program was using prostitutes to recruit high school kids, and now he’ll have to pay the price.

http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....t-save-him-and-that-is-how-the-ncaa-wants-it/

 

[Halldan1]

How parties with strippers and escorts could cost Louisville its 2013 national title
The NCAA levied stiff penalties vs. the Cardinals after a lengthy investigation of the sex scandal Matt Norlander

• @MattNorlander

The NCAA's Committee on Infractions unveiled its findings and levied its sanctions against the Louisville men's basketball program on Thursday. The case has centered around years worth of escort-laden parties that were primarily organized by a former U of L director of basketball operations, Andre McGee.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino has maintained from the beginning that he had no knowledge of McGee's actions. Nevertheless, the NCAA is holding Pitino accountable and suspending him for the first five games of ACC play in 2017-18. Pitino is appealing that ruling.

In light of the news, and amid Louisville officials' passionate rejection of the NCAA's punishments, let's clear up what has happened, what could happen, and what punishments will stick. Here are the basics of what you need to know, and why this case could be historic.

Did Louisville lose its 2012-13 NCAA national championship banner?

No. Not yet. But it could if it doesn't win its appeal of the NCAA sanctions. And if it doesn't win, it will be the first time in men's basketball history that a collegiate national champion in that sport has a national title vacated. Most recently, Syracuseavoided this kind of punishment (it won the 2003 national title) but had heavy punishments elsewhere. North Carolina's academic fraud case is ongoing, and the Tar Heels -- potentially -- could lose their 2005 and/or their 2009 banners.

In regard to the 2013 Louisville NCAA Tournament title, here's what will come next: Louisville and the NCAA will work together in the coming days and/or weeks (there is a 45-day deadline; that's July 30) to determine which games Louisville won and had ineligible players involved. The NCAA said on its Thursday conference call with the media that "it's the NCAA's process to go through the analysis after the decision is released, so that the institution and the NCAA will determine [which games are vacated]. It's standard process."

According to Chuck Smrt, a compliance consultant working at Louisville, there are 108 regular-season games and 15 NCAA Tournament victories that will fall under review. Louisville could also vacate its 2012 Final Four appearance.

http://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...ould-cost-louisville-its-2013-national-title/

 

[hallgrad80]

For those who have worked in the securities industry they are fully aware that there is a " Failure to Supervise " provision in the Securities Statutes that not only provides for sanctions when there is a supervisory failure but also places an affirmative obligation on supervisors to have in place a system to detect and prevent violations. That standard has led to supervisors being sanctioned when violations occurred even though they did not commit the violation or were aware of it , i.e. they should known about it and that was enough to find they " failed to supervise" . As I read the stories concerning the sanctions placed on Louisville and coach Pitino it appeared to me that they were using a standard not unlike those in the Federal Statues in that Pitino had an obligation to know what his assistant coaches are doing during their campus visits with recruits and had he known what they were doing the violations would not have occurred. It will be interesting if subsequent cases see the NCAA apply the same standard to head coaches where serious violations occur.

 

[bornApirate]

Like the article says these recruits follow a player around and do everything that would normally occur on a college weekend. To think this doesn't happen at every school is naive. Louisville just got caught. Vacating wins is silly. They won those games and that's not going to change. The goal should be to stop this from happening again. Change the way visits go. Ban official visits. Do something that helps.

 

[Section112]

To me it does not matter if Pitino knew or not. He is the head coach and the buck stops with him. If he really didn't know (which I highly doubt) then he is more guilty in my opinion and deserves everything he gets.
I still can't figure out how NC has gotten off from a scandal as bad or worse than this IMO.

 

[Halldan1]

NC has delayed their penalties by doing everything possible to battle the NCAA before a finding comes down. That has made it difficult for the governing body as they know they have to be very precise in their accusations and make sure what they do and say will hold up.

In particular the seemingly bogus African studies class was offered to far more than just athletes and that's one of the main points of emphasis in the NCAA's case.

I have no issue with the delay but if the penalty isn't just IMO then I will.