Louisville Basketball Scandal---- are the cardinals about to be cooked?

[WVRed]

It was a pretty big hammer. They are probably going to have to vacate very win for about four seasons. That includes a national title which is unprecedented in college basketball. They also have to give back four years worth of NCAA tournament money which isn't insignificant. Plus a reduction in scholarships. The only bigger hammer that could have come down would have been the death penalty and NCAA is never doing that again.

Pitino getting only five games is why it's questionable. Especially when you consider what Boeheim got for less.

And it's not even 100% set in stone that the wins are going to be vacated either. The NCAA had an opportunity to set an example and they failed.

[BillDoran]

I agree on the surface vacating is a joke. The punishment is mostly the humiliation of having to do that. Like I said, its unprecedented for a college basketball national championship to be vacated. How would you like being known as the first and so far only school to have that done?

I would think about how good Russ Smith was and how well Luke Hancock played down the stretch.

Vacating wins, that's just the price of doing big college sports business these days.

The NCAA is the enabler of all that is awful in college football and basketball. If they were remotely serious about their stated mission, they'd provide consistent and severe punishment for buying hookers for recruits, the academic scandal at UNC, the booster money that is everywhere, etc.

Either the NCAA is on the take or they are the most incompetently run organization known to man.

[Bourgeois Zee]

Either the NCAA is on the take or they are the most incompetently run organization known to man.

It's a good-ole boy network of the worst order with clear favorites who receive preferential treatment.

Duke can play an ineligible player for a championship season, and it's ignored. Players can wear a $70,000 dollar necklace, and it gets ignored. Parents can receive jobs from the university they are unqualified for, and it's ignored. Coach K? Ignores federal law in favor of playing a two-time sexual assaulter until it gets so bad he's forced to do something.

UNC can play ineligible players for 20+ years, and it gets ignored. Williams paid players at Kansas and got away with it. He's the coach at the center of the biggest academic scandal in the history of the game, and he's a paragon of freakin' virtue, according to the NCAA.

Meanwhile, Calipari nearly gets probation for celebrating his supposed 500th win as a coach. And, before the Cal Haters dig in, remember that his teams have been punished. Rose was ineligible for one ACT score (maybe), and the banner came down. Camby received 'thousands of dollars" from an agent, and the banner came down.

Pitino lorded over a program where strippers and hookers were brought in to service both prospects and their fathers. (Eww.) They played ineligible players who were given extra benefits. (Again, eww.) These banners should come down. (And look like they are.)

It's patently ridiculous.

[RiverRat13]

There is little doubt that UNC will get the hammer from the NCAA. The real theater in that deal will be a couple of years down the road when UNC takes the NCAA to court.

[Bourgeois Zee]

There is little doubt that UNC will get the hammer from the NCAA.

I have serious doubts.

They've never been willing to punish them before despite obvious issues.

[WVRed]

I have serious doubts.

They've never been willing to punish them before despite obvious issues.

And even if it does, UNC is the type who will Tom Brady it.

I still think the NCAA mucked it up. A real example would have been a season long suspension. If Sean Payton can get a year long suspension by the NFL for putting bounties out to injure players, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest the same for Pitino, even though the situations are different.

[bounty37h]

Smoking gun gentlemen......smoking gun

I think they probably had to pay the ladies extra to perform the smoking gun on the players. Esp if they wanted the gun to shoot.

[MWM]

I thought Cam Newton being able to continue playing was a low point for the NCAA. Then I thought it was the UNC scandal. This is a new one.

[Bourgeois Zee]

I thought Cam Newton being able to continue playing was a low point for the NCAA. Then I thought it was the UNC scandal. This is a new one.

You believe Hooker-gate is worse than the UNC academic scandal?

I get that. The "eww" factor is horribly high.

That said, UNC has been handing out faux classes and degrees for 20+ years.

IMO, time matters.

[Boston Red]

I think the academic scandal at UNC is far worse, because it's not "just" an athletics thing. They devalued the degrees of a bunch of UNC alums who didn't even know UNC had an African American studies department, much less took one of the paper classes.

I think the UofL hooker thing is pretty gross and stupid, but I think it's far from the worst thing I've heard about in college sports. It's not the worst thing I've heard about in college sports this month even.

[Bourgeois Zee]

I think the academic scandal at UNC is far worse, because it's not "just" an athletics thing. They devalued the degrees of a bunch of UNC alums who didn't even know UNC had an African American studies department, much less took one of the paper classes.

I think the UofL hooker thing is pretty gross and stupid, but I think it's far from the worst thing I've heard about in college sports. It's not the worst thing I've heard about in college sports this month even.

I think it's among the worst, for sure. "Making" under-age kids have sex crosses a major line.

That said, I agree that the UNC gig is horrid for those reasons you list.

At this point, I'd argue the worst NCAA scandals of all time rank:

1. Penn State turning a blind eye to raping children for 30 years.
2. Baylor coach and all-around scumbag Dave Bliss instructing his players to lie about the murder of Patrick Denehy.
3. North Carolina's academic malfeasance. (Which is made worse by their continuing stonewalling of NCAA invesigators from the top down AND their success on the basketball court. The NCAA knows they (the university and the coaching staff) are dirty, but allowes them to continue to play without punishment.)
4. Louisville's Hooker-Gate.
5. Baylor football's sexual violence issue and Art Briles' refusal to do anything about it despite knowing what happened. This one gets extra credit because it's supposedly a Christian-based school and the sanctimonious hypocrisy of Ken Starr.

[RiverRat13]

There is little doubt that UNC will get the hammer from the NCAA. The real theater in that deal will be a couple of years down the road when UNC takes the NCAA to court.

FWIW, Jay Bilas said something very similar this morning on Mike and Mike. He also said the NCAA will lose big to UNC once it gets to federal court.

[Chip R]

I think it's among the worst, for sure. "Making" under-age kids have sex crosses a major line.

That said, I agree that the UNC gig is horrid for those reasons you list.

At this point, I'd argue the worst NCAA scandals of all time rank:

1. Penn State turning a blind eye to raping children for 30 years.
2. Baylor coach and all-around scumbag Dave Bliss instructing his players to lie about the murder of Patrick Denehy.
3. North Carolina's academic malfeasance. (Which is made worse by their continuing stonewalling of NCAA invesigators from the top down AND their success on the basketball court. The NCAA knows they (the university and the coaching staff) are dirty, but allowes them to continue to play without punishment.)
4. Louisville's Hooker-Gate.
5. Baylor football's sexual violence issue and Art Briles' refusal to do anything about it despite knowing what happened. This one gets extra credit because it's supposedly a Christian-based school and the sanctimonious hypocrisy of Ken Starr.

I'd switch 3 and 4 but otherwise I think you're spot on. I think plying underage recruits and their fathers with hookers is more reprehensible than academic fraud. For one thing thing, prostitution is illegal although a victimless crime. For another thing underage kids and their fathers were involved in this all with university money. I'm sure the good citizens of the Commonwealth don't want their taxes and contributions to the school to go towards using hookers to recruit athletes. I realize that coeds have been used at schools in the past to help recruits make up their minds but they aren't actual hookers. One could say they are prostituting themselves but that's semantics. As for academic fraud, while reprehensible, that's gone on since colleges started playing sports. Back around the turn of the century, it wasn't uncommon to have players on college football teams that weren't even students at the university. And I think we've all seen players in the past (and probably the present) that couldn't have got through college without some help be it tutoring or actual grade fixing.

[Falls City Beer]

The reason they can't and won't go after UNC is that academic fraud is universal. It's everywhere. NCAA can't open that can of worms. They'd never get it closed again. What happened at UL is more anomalous and isolated.

[WMR]

Between this and using the UL Foundation as a personal piggy bank for himself and his son, the fact that Jurich still has a job is stupefying...

He really is the most powerful man in Louisville, it appears.

If those shenanigans had gone on at UK, I would demand the entire administration/coaching staff be fired. (But it would've already happened long ago...)

On that note, if Louisville had done the right thing from the start and cleaned house, they very well might have been allowed to keep their banners.

Furthermore, although he regularly makes insane/dumb comments, the fact that Pitino decided it was a good idea to hold a press conference TRASHING the NCAA less than an hour after the penalties were announced was dumbfounding. It's not like that stunt engendered any sympathy from anyone... I guarantee you that every potential member of the committee who will hear their appeal was watching, and I can't imagine they were amused.

Surely UL's legal counsel warned against such a stunt... but, then again, UL did try to make the legal argument that the cheapness of the prostitutes should've been a mitigating factor in their case, so who knows...

My question is where are the civil lawsuits from the recruits? One recruit was even pressured into sleeping with a prostitute... if that was my child, I'd be suing UL's ASS off.