Pitino’s misdeeds ruin memories
Somewhere in my parents’ basement in Louisville, there is evidence of abandoned sports innocence. Somewhere — in a box or folder, under some old toys or with other items that time rendered unimportant — rests a 27-year-old high school basketball program decorated with Rick Pitino’s autograph, as well as a Paducah Sun newspaper with a picture of me, at age 12, standing in front of a table as the iconic-turned-shamed coach signed his name.
In 1990, they were cute mementos.
In 2017, they are just sad and forgotten.
I haven’t seen the autograph and newspaper in at least 20 years. I’m not an autograph person anyway. That is the only signature I’ve asked for, and I did it because my father made me get it — even though Pitino was then the coach at the University of Kentucky, my family’s red-clad, Louisvilleloving, bitter rival.
“Don’t be shy,” Dad said. “Don’t you want to always remember that you met Rick Pitino?”
The memory signifies ruin now. Pitino, the coach who revived both of the commonwealth’s blueblooded college basketball programs, has become a man buried by scandal. Because basketball rules the state, Pitino has doubled as Kentucky’s most influential and polarizing figure for much of the past 30 years. But now he’s hustling into cars to dodge reporters who once laughed at his every joke.
The Hall of Famer has won 770 college games, but three scandals over the past eight years have tainted his legacy. The latest will be his career’s death knell: An FBI investigation exposed a scheme to pay players. Pitino was fortunate to survive the embarrassment of an affair that led to the woman trying to extort him. He was the luckiest coach ever to survive a recruiting scandal involving escorts that resulted in Louisville receiving major NCAA sanctions. But this? A third shocker, as part of an ongoing probe that may shatter college basketball? A glorious career is now in flames as Pitino retreats from the limelight for the first time and waits for Louisville to alter his status from “effectively fired” to officially gone.
At the end of a stunning and maddening week, I’m left to unpack something I thought no longer existed: personal sports feelings. I thought that journalism had expunged all of my emotional fandom. And then the coach whose autograph I misplaced long ago exited in disgrace.
It used to feel so pure, watching Louisville basketball. It was a family thing, the conduit to our unconditional love, the Cardinals spurring this quiet boy to communicate with his larger-than-life father.
My first sports memory: Dad screaming for Denny Crum to call a timeout in the 1983 Final Four when Houston and Phi Slama Jama went on an epic run. I was 5. First moment of sports joy: watching “Never Nervous” Pervis Ellison lead Louisville to the 1986 NCAA title as a freshman. I was 8.
First major sports argument: when I crossed the family line and developed a fan crush for Rex Chapman, who played for Kentucky. I was 9. First instance of professional turmoil: when I returned to my home state in 2004 to write for the Louisville Courier-Journal and shunned Cardinals fandom for journalistic objectivity. I was 26.
My parents responded by giving me a Kentucky Wildcats polo shirt for Christmas.
Now that Pitino’s career is likely over, he is easy to mock and label as a jerk whose arrogance sealed his demise. But I don’t need to be the most outraged writer on this story. The alleged misconduct is despicable, and if everything is true, Pitino and the entire program will get what they deserve for their repeated, reckless disregard for the rules.
When the scandal broke, I sent my dad a text. “Sorry, Pops,” I began. An hour later, he wrote back: “Speechless!”
Would Dad take back Pitino’s hiring — which produced three Final Fours and a 2013 national title — from 16 years ago? My brother asked him that Wednesday. He didn’t respond, so the next day, I pushed him: “Pops, what say you?”
“I would have had to pass on Rick,” he said. “He hurt the program. Killed us, literally!”
Pitino killed some of our joy, too. As a journalist, it can be easy to dismiss the collateral damage when a scandal breaks. As the boy who once sought the autograph of the defamed coach, the collateral damage is all that I care about right now.
Louisville basketball has been corrupted. Our family’s safe haven is no longer safe.