LOUISVILLE BASKETBALL: A Program That May Deserve More Than Just an NCAA "Death Penalty"

By John Ruberry

Last week I wrote this in my own blog about a scandal-​plagued state uni­ver­sity in Ken­tucky: “Is Louisville a col­lege with an ath­letic pro­gram? Or is it an ath­letic pro­gram that offers some col­lege classes?”

Late last month the shad­owy and cor­rupt realm of NCAA men’s col­lege bas­ket­ball, whose play­ers are nom­i­nally ama­teurs, was shat­tered by the rev­e­la­tion of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of pay­ments to recruits that allegedly comes from Adi­das. Ten peo­ple have been arrested, includ­ing four assis­tant coaches at Power Five col­lege hoops pro­grams. More arrests are expected.

But most of the media focus on the scan­dal is on the the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville, where no one so far faces charges.

Allegedly an AAU coach, Jonathan Brad Augus­tine, whose team is spon­sored by Adi­das, boasted to an under­cover FBI agent about the reach of Car­di­nals coach Rick Pitino – who is iden­ti­fied as “Coach-​2″ in court records – and how Pitino could get James “Jim” Gatto, the direc­tor of global sports mar­ket­ing for bas­ket­ball at Adi­das, to send $100,000 to the fam­ily of a Louisville recruit. That ath­lete, Brian Bowen, enrolled at Louisville. But now he’s been sus­pended from the team.

Oh, the first “A” in AAU stands for “amatuer.”

“No one swings a big­ger d – k than [Coach-​2],” Augus­tine report­edly said after learn­ing that Gatto had dif­fi­culty in allegedly send­ing the $100K to Bowen’s fam­ily. He added that “all [Coach-​2] has to do is pick up the phone and call some­body [and say], ‘These are my guys – they’re tak­ing care of us.’”

Those remarks appear to have been lifted from a Sopra­nos script.

Pitino, and Louisville’s ath­letic direc­tor, Tom Jurich, were sus­pended by the uni­ver­sity the day after the scan­dal broke. Both of them are expected to be fired but in the mean­time they are the high­est paid per­sons in their posi­tions in col­lege sports.

But despite its suc­cess on the field – Louisville has a pretty good foot­ball team by the way–the ath­letic depart­ment loses money. Appar­ently Louisville man­ages its ath­letic depart­ment as poorly as the state of Ken­tucky runs its public-​worker pen­sion pro­grams.

Pitino is the only NCAA men’s bas­ket­ball coach to win national cham­pi­onships at two uni­ver­si­ties, Ken­tucky and Louisville. But four months ago the Car­di­nals pro­gram landed on NCAA pro­ba­tion because of a pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal involv­ing recruits, some of whom were under­age. Uh, where are the Louisville Police? The NCAA sus­pended Pitino for five games and Louisville will have to vacate some vic­to­ries – and pos­si­bly its 2013 NCAA title. Pitino claims igno­rance of the hir­ing of these “dancers” by the pro­gram. He also claimed to be sim­ply a put-​upon vic­tim in a extor­tion attempt by a woman, Karen Sypher, who alleged that Pitino raped her. The Bas­ket­ball Hall of Fame coach, who is mar­ried, admit­ted to con­sen­sual sex with Sypher – she later went to prison. Pitino also admit­ted to pay­ing for her abor­tion.

Because Louisville’s men’s hoops pro­gram is already on pro­ba­tion, it’s likely that the Car­di­nals are eli­gi­ble for the NCAA “death penalty” if they are found to be a two-​time offender. The death penalty allows the NCAA to shut down a pro­gram for at least a year.

I say cut down the nets and turn off the lights for Louisville bas­ket­ball, prefer­ably for sev­eral years. The pos­si­bil­ity of the death penalty has hold­ers of the junk bonds financ­ing the sta­dium where the Car­di­nals play under­stand­ably a bit nervous.

At the very least Louisville needs a fresh start, but so far it’s off to a dread­ful one. Pitino’s interim replace­ment is one of his for­mer play­ers, David Pad­gett, who until two years ago was direc­tor of bas­ket­ball oper­a­tions at Louisville. Was Pad­gett a glo­ri­fied clerk? Or a figurehead?

Louisville has other prob­lems and one of them involves Adi­das. Of the money from the cur­rent mar­ket­ing con­tract the shoe giant has with the bas­ket­ball team, report­edly 98 per­cent of it goes to Pitino. Shouldn’t the gen­eral rev­enue fund of this taxpayer-​supported col­lege get at least a healthy cut?

Jurich, the money-​losing sus­pended ath­letic direc­tor, likely earned more money annu­ally than the bud­gets of four Louisville aca­d­e­mic depart­ments.

This scan­dal has legs longer than those of the late Manute Bol – and I’m pre­dict­ing not only will it spread to other col­leges and AAU pro­grams but to high school hoops as well, start­ing with the Chicago Pub­lic League. Lack of pay­ments prob­a­bly explains why the Chicago recruit­ing appa­ra­tus for years shuts out bas­ket­ball pro­grams such as DePaul and the one at my alma mater, the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Urbana-​Champaign. Both schools are nat­ural fits for Pub­lic League tal­ent and both of them used to recruit very suc­cess­fully in Chicago.

Do you have a bet­ter explanation?

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