Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Five Talking Points from Louisville’s Notice of Allegations

Rick Pitino

Rick Pitino

AP

On Thursday morning, Louisville released the Notice of Allegations that they received from the NCAA following an investigation into the escort scandal that enveloped the basketball program.

They got hit with four Level I violations.

You can read the details of the NCAA’s findings here.

Here are four things to know about what these allegations mean for the Louisville program and for Pitino.

1. The NCAA did not allege that Rick Pitino knew: That’s the biggest thing to note here. Pitino himself did get nailed with a Level I violation, a failure to monitor charge. The way the new NCAA rules are structured, there is no more plausible deniability. If it happened within a program, the head coach has to take his share of the blame, and Pitino will certainly have to deal with the fall out of that.

But the NCAA did not find evidence that Pitino himself knew about the escorts or that he sanctioned the parties that they were attending with recruits and players. So while Pitino spent Thursday’s press conference talking himself in circles - he said he “over-monitors” his staff while also saying he’s only “guilty of trusting someone.” - the bottom line is that the only connection he officially has to this scandal is that it happened under his watch.

2. It would be shocking if Pitino doesn’t get suspended: Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim and then-SMU head coach Larry Brown, hall of famers that were suspended for nine games apiece at the start of last season, both found that out the hard way that the NCAA will suspend a coach when violations occur in their program. This scandal has been one of the biggest stories in college basketball for more than a year. Pitino is not going to get away without an added punishment, but based on the timeline - Louisville has 90 days to respond to the allegations, and the NCAA has 60 days to handle that response - any additional sanctions, including a coach suspension, won’t be until at least the 2017-18 season.

3. Andre McGee is the hero Louisville didn’t know they needed: Louisville found their fall guy.

McGee, a former staffer that eventually rose to Director of Basketball Operations, killed any chance of continuing his coaching career when he refused to talk to be interviewed by the NCAA in this case. He refused to talk to the media, with ESPN’s Outside the Lines only able to get a ‘no comment’ on tape while McGee zipped away in the Uber he was driving.

He didn’t speak to the media. He didn’t tweet about the case. He never revealed, publicly of off the record, where the money ($5,400 confirmed by the NCAA) came from, how he snuck the girls into the players’ dorm, or if anyone above him in the program gave him the go-ahead.

“I’m not guilty of failing to monitor my staff. I’m guilty of trusting someone,” Pitino said Thursday. “This young man made a very big mistake, and we apologize for his mistakes.”

McGee fell on the sword. The only way that this gets spun as anything other than an over-ambitious, rogue staffer trying to launch his career is if McGee breaks his silence. Until then, Louisville basketball is protected.

4. The 2013 title may not be safe: In ‘Breaking Cardinal Rules’, Katina Powell named players that played on the 2013 title team as having been involved in the scandal. And given that this was happening between 2010 and 2014, it’s pretty safe to assume that at least one player that won a ring was involved. The NCAA has ruled the parties as an impermissible benefit, which would allow them to be able to rule the players involved as retroactively inactive.

The document released by Louisville has names and dates redacted, but it is safe to assume the NCAA within their rights to vacate the 2013 national title season. Chuck Smrt, a former NCAA enforcement director, said, “We don’t believe a vacation of records penalty is appropriate,” but that certainly doesn’t mean the Cardinals are in the clear. The NCAA is notoriously inconsistent with decisions like this, so predicting the outcome is difficult, but my guess would be that the banner is not taken down. The NCAA has never stripped a men’s basketball team of a title, and Louisville self-imposed a postseason ban in February, just four months after this story broke, on a team that had real Final Four potential.

Blaming this all on a rogue staff member and self-sacrificing s postseason was the best way for Louisville to try and save the banner.

5. Will this be the end for Pitino?: He’s been through two sex scandals at Louisville. He’s 64 years old. He is, in all likelihood, looking at a significant suspension in 2017-18. And he has a team that is good enough to make a run at a Final Four.

Use 2016-17 as a farewell tour and then get out of dodge before the repercussions start rolling in. Wouldn’t that be the best way for him to ride off into the sunset?