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Favorable Notice of Allegations will benefit both Rick Pitino, Louisville
The most noteworthy aspect of the Notice of Allegations released Thursday by Louisville is what it doesn’t contain.
There was not one word from the man who could have done the most damage to Rick Pitino and the Cardinals basketball program.
Had former Louisville staffer Andre McGee chose to cooperate with NCAA investigators, he could have revealed who knew about the sex parties he arranged for Cardinals recruits or where he got the money to hire the strippers that performed at them. By choosing to remain silent instead, McGee made his best legal play but also allowed himself to become the scapegoat Louisville desperately needed.
The NCAA portrayed McGee as acting covertly and alone in arranging for strippers to dance for and have sex with Louisville recruits at an on-campus dormitory. The Notice of Allegations did not suggest that Pitino or anyone else at the university had any knowledge of the parties McGee organized from 2010-14 as a way of enticing top prospects to enroll at Louisville.
For Pitino and Louisville, that’s the most favorable way the NCAA could have framed one of the most salacious recruiting scandals in college sports history.
Louisville escaped any charges directed at the university itself, but McGee was hit with two Level One violations, the most serious in the NCAA’s enforcement structure. Pitino also received one for failure to adequately monitor McGee, as did former program assistant Brandon Williams for refusing to provide telephone records requested of him by Louisville officials and NCAA enforcement staff.
Those charges suggest that the sanctions Louisville self-imposed earlier this year may be largely enough to satisfy the NCAA when the case goes before the Committee on Infractions next year. The Cardinals voluntarily imposed scholarship restrictions and removed a 19-4 ACC title contender from postseason consideration last February, gambling that punishing themselves ahead of time could stave off future penalties that would hamper the program for years and impact future recruiting.
At the time, Pitino railed against the self-imposed postseason ban and expressed heartfelt sympathy for seniors Damion Lee and Trey Lewis, two graduate transfers who came to Louisville hoping to play in the NCAA tournament. In retrospect, even he might agree it was a smart move, albeit a cynical one that came at the expense of two wholly blameless players.
Louisville also looks shrewd for standing behind Pitino last fall amid calls for his resignation or dismissal.
That investigators conducted more than 90 interviews yet uncovered no evidence Pitino was complicit in the scandal is a massive win for the Hall of Fame coach. It minimizes the damage to his program and legacy and bolsters his longstanding position that he and his assistant coaches were as flabbergasted as anyone last October when they learned of the allegations.
How much Pitino knew has been a subject of fervent debate in basketball circles since the release of Louisville madam Katina Powell’s tell-all book sparked an NCAA investigation.
On one hand, it’s difficult to believe that a coach as famously detail-oriented as Pitino could be completely unaware of how recruits were being entertained during their visits unless he wanted to remain in the dark. On the other hand, it’s equally unfathomable that a coach as savvy and successful as Pitino would authorize such a clumsy, high-risk, low-reward scheme.
In an era when a coach can align himself with an agent, shoe-apparel company or AAU program to help steer prospects to his school, there are smarter ways to influence a player’s decision than what Louisville did. A coach with any common sense at all would know that on-campus stripper parties won’t stay secret for long, especially when many recruits who attended either didn’t sign with Louisville or transferred after a year or two.
While NCAA enforcement staffers appear to have accepted Pitino’s argument that he wasn’t directly involved in the scheme, they also correctly ruled that he’s hardly blameless. He was the one who hired McGee as a graduate assistant in 2010 and then promoted him to director of basketball operations in 2012. And he’s the one responsible for monitoring his program and making sure it’s complying with NCAA rules.
“Pitino did not demonstrate that he monitored Andre McGee,” the Notice of Allegations reads. “He failed to frequently spot-check the program to uncover potential or existing compliance problems, including actively looking for and evaluating red flags, asking pointed questions and regularly soliciting honest feedback to determine if monitoring systems were functioning properly regarding McGee’s activities and interactions.”
The two biggest remaining questions now are if the NCAA will punish Pitino individually or make Louisville vacate any of its victories from 2010-2014. The Cardinals made the Final Four in 2012 and captured the 2013 national title.
The NCAA said Pitino is in jeopardy of receiving a show-cause penalty if the allegation that he failed to monitor McGee properly is upheld by the Committee on Infractions next year. If so, he could receive a suspension similar to the nine-game suspensions fellow Hall of Famers Jim Boeheim and Larry Brown served last season for violations within their programs.
Louisville said in a statement that it will dispute that Pitino didn’t properly monitor McGee, noting that McGee “acted furtively” and that the Notice of Allegations “does not indicate any other university employee besides McGee had knowledge of these activities.”
It’s certainly within Louisville’s rights to contest the allegation against Pitino, but the Cardinals might want to quit while they’re ahead.
One year ago, they were waylaid by a shocking and embarrassing scandal that threatened to derail the momentum the program had built in recent years. Now they’ve likely already served the worst of their punishment and the end of their public humiliation is in sight.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
