NCAA Hands Down Penalties to Louisville Basketball Including Suspending Rick Pitino

In what’s usually reserved for a Friday news dump in the summer, the NCAA came a little early (pun HIGHLY intended) on sanctions for Louisville regarding the stripper/hooker situation and the basketball team. Here’s what the NCAA came up with as part of the sanctions:

So let’s go kind of line by line of what it means because there is still some uncertainty, especially regarding whether or not the NCAA is stripping Louisville of the 2013 national title. First, we know Rick Pitino will be suspended for the first five games of the ACC schedule. That’s not overly surprising, in fact seems a little light especially when you look at other suspensions that we’ve seen the NCAA hand down. In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty irrelevant. The ACC schedule is fairly long and we’ve seen the NCAA Tournament committee use this as an excuse to not count games, just think of when Boeheim missed time at Syracuse and K missed time at Duke. They look past that. Right off the bat, Pitino is pretty lucky.

The show cause for Andre McGee again is fairly irrelevant. He was already essentially blackballed from the coaching community and no one is going to touch him now. Again, this was expected as McGee was the main person involved in this investigation and now with the 10-year show cause we can fully expect to never see McGee coaching again.

Now to the two biggest ones here. The vacation of basketball records from December 2010 to July 2014. That means the 2013 national title is in complete jeopardy of being vacated. The NCAA hasn’t announced yet which games will be vacated, but there’s a chance that the 2013 title game (one memorable game) never happened. I hate that. Vacating wins/titles is perhaps the dumbest thing the NCAA does in a long list of dumb shit the NCAA does. We all remember the game. We all remember Peyton Siva’s dad. What’s the point of saying ‘oh, nope, that never happened?’ It’s not like Michigan all of a sudden becomes champions nor should they.

This is what we want to watch now. It will reveal even more info and put what is likely the final chapter in this investigation in the books. We’ll know what players were visited by the hookers and if Louisville vacates the national title.

Finally, perhaps the biggest sigh of relief for Louisville is the NCAA panel accepted the postseason ban of 2015-16 as enough. There’s no postseason ban for a top-10 team this year, which is shockingly the correct decision. These guys didn’t have anything to do with the scandal and it never makes sense to punish those who didn’t play a role. Let these kids go and win a title (perhaps a fake title if you’re the 2013 team). I was hoping this would be the case and I’m glad the NCAA decided to go that route.

There is also a four year probation period in which the team will lose some scholarships.

All in all it seems fair and possibly on the light side depending what happens with the 2013 title. As for Pitino and his legacy, I don’t think people will look at him that much differently as many other greats have had their own share of suspensions and problems. Pitino is one of the greatest college basketball coaches to be on the sidelines and it will stay that way, regardless of any vacated games.