NCAA sends Louisville, Pitino clear message
Penalties speak loudly, as Louisville fights to preserve ’13 title
Cardinals coach suspended 5 games in wake of scandal
The NCAA’s message to head coaches regarding wrongdoing under their watch has become clear.
It doesn’t matter you knew what was going on; it only matters that you should have known.
Louisville’s Rick Pitino becomes the latest coach to learn this lesson, slapped with a fivegame suspension among a host of other men’s basketball program-wide penalties as a result of a prostitution-and-strippers scandal that stretched over a period of four years and could cost the Cardinals their 2013 national title. The NCAA’s Commit- tee on Infractions, in its findings released Thursday morning, stated repeatedly that such a case was unprecedented.
You can parse through all the sordid details if you want. The NCAA has made its report public.
And what you’ll notice — pret- ty clearly — is something you’ve seen and heard from a lot of head coaches who end up investigated by the NCAA: denial.
Pitino has said repeatedly, including to the NCAA, that he had no knowledge of the lurid (and, in many cases, illegal) activities going on at an on-campus dormitory that housed predominantly basketball players. He and the Louisville athletics department have tried to frame the scandal as the responsibility of one rogue actor — former director of operations Andre McGee. What you’ll