Rick Pitino could tell he was in trouble more than three months before he was fired.
University of Louisville board of trustees minutes show Pitino entered its June 28 meeting at 1:12 p.m., just as the board entered executive session to discuss litigation and personnel matters.
When Pitino walked out 35 minutes later, the Hall of Fame coach carried the conviction he was no longer wanted. Ninety days before the FBI made its first arrest in the bribery scandal that has engulfed college basketball, Pitino read the room as executioners awaiting an excuse.
Pitino recalls former universityathletic director Tom Jurich telling him neither board chairman David Grissom nor vice chairman “Papa John” Schnatter wanted him there. He remembers Schnatter, participating via video conference, claiming the NCAA had charged Pitino’s basketball program with 17 Level 1 violations and mocking him for being present at the meeting.
“I have a problem with coaches coming to trustees meetings,” Pitino quoted Schnatter as saying. “What’s next, the women’s volleyball coach coming in there?”
When Pitino agreed to replace Denny Crum at U of L in 2001, Schnatter sent a private plane to Boston to fetch him and then put him up at his guest house. But the relationship between the school’s most prominent employee and its most prominent donor had deteriorated.
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Schnatter’s spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Citing pending litigation, Jurich declined to characterize the June 28 meeting. Pitino recalled his own immediate response to Schnatter’s statements as “very humiliated, very hurt.”
“I went to my staff the next day,” he said. “I told them, ‘Don’t even think about jaywalking. These people don’t want me here. ... If there’s anything in question, you call compliance.’ I beat that into them.”
Pitino was ultimately undone by the alleged complicity of an assistant coach in an allegedly Adidas-funded bribery scheme behind the recruitment of five-star forward Brian Bowen. Though one of those indicted, sports agent Christian Dawkins, has said Pitino was asked to participate in the scheme, no charges have been filed against himand no other college head coach has lost his job as a result of the scandal.
“I think they made a very big mistake,” Pitino said. “They rushed to judgment on a lot of things. Here you are, you’ve got to fight the NCAA for a lot of things. You fire the head coach and you send a red flag to the NCAA that Louisville did some things wrong. They told the whole country I was guilty.
“Everybody else in the country stayed calm and said, ‘Wait a minute. What’s all this about?’ ... The Miami situation is exactly the same as mine, but nobody’s fired in the country except me. It was very traumatic, very humiliating.”
What Pitino fails to mention is that he was already down two strikes on the scandal front when the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced its basketball-related arrests on Sept. 26. Between his ill-fated fling with Karen Sypher and the stripper scandal for which U of L will appeal its NCAA sanctions next week, Pitino has tested the patience and the trust of his most steadfast fans.
Read this:Tom Jurich says Papa John comment about Louisville athletics 'was a setup'
Even some of his advocates acknowledge “Pitino Fatigue” as a factor in the comparatively muted complaints about his firing. For his part, Pitino claims to have “lost my bitterness” over the dismissal that became official on Oct. 16, but he sounds like a man unconvinced of his own words.
“You work at a place a long time,” he said. “You give your heart and soul. You love the place and all of a sudden you’re asked to leave without an explanation. It’s very hurtful. The only reason I’m not as bitter as I should be is I don’t believe these people (on the board of trustees) are the University of Louisville.”
He said Thursday he had watched only half of one U of L game this season, the Cardinals’ 66-57 loss at Purdue on Nov. 28. It was during that broadcast ESPN’s Jeff Goodman reported Pitino had told him David Padgett probably needed to take the team at least as far as the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in order that his interim status be made permanent.
Pitino said that comment was made off-the-record, and amounted to no more than agreeing with a standard Goodman suggested. Goodman declined to comment on his conversation with Pitino.
“It’s really disturbing,” Pitino said of the subsequent controversy stoked by ESPN analyst Dan Dakich. “It was a great choice hiring David. This is a team with a lot of experience. ... To come in and bring a whole new system in would just kill this team.”
Pitino said Padgett “understood the game as well as anyone I’ve coached,” directing U of L’s offense as a “point center,” and that his hope was that his protege would hold the job for 10 years. He resisted a request for an interim evaluation.
“I need to watch a whole game,” he said. “But I’m torn emotionally. It makes me very sad when someone mentions my name in a derogatory way.”
Pitino continues to say U of L surrendered too tamely to the NCAA and that it should have fought as aggressively as did the University of North Carolina in avoiding sanctions for an academic fraud case. He continues to assert his personal innocence of U of L’s infractions.
“I’ll stick by this statement and put my hand on the Bible,” he said, “I’ve never paid a player a nickel.”
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When he met with the board of trustees on June 28, Pitino distributed a booklet in which former players and coaches testified to his integrity. Told it was “too self-serving” for presentation to the NCAA, Rick Pitino persists nonetheless. He is suing U of L for breach of contract and Adidas for damaging his reputation.
When he's not dealing with attorneys, Pitino works out, plays golf and devours books. He says he is in the best shape of his life, well-read and bored.
“I had a routine for 40 years," he said. "Suddenly, I’m waking up by myself at 5:30 in the morning, waiting for the sun to rise.”
Tim Sullivan: 502-582-4650; tsullivan@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @TimSullivan714. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/tims
