Probably fair to say that Jurich’s missteps with Pitino will cost UofL some money and that the hasty way he was fired will cost a little money. In the end it’ll be a small price to pay for the damage Pitino and staff has done.
The State of Louisville Basketball
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Probably fair to say that Jurich’s missteps with Pitino will cost UofL some money and that the hasty way he was fired will cost a little money. In the end it’ll be a small price to pay for the damage Pitino and staff has done.
Yeah, it's been a huge chit sandwich and if we want to hang around as fans, we will all have to take a huge bite and eat it.
I'm ready to pen my least admired-ever post. Imagine taking the RICO-like provisions of the NCAA's frankly unusually lump-sum standards of program responsibility to court. Is there anyone in this entire room who does not realize it is a shortcut intended to display morality, but which in reality reveals more about the moral standards of a select few than of a society as a whole? Does the hypocrisy of all this matter?? The overbite of said standards has gotten coaches in bad hot water who arguably had zero or less understanding of the same shit that occurs in everyday life to understandably fewer objections. Everyone wants the guilty to pay - we all do. It's the law and it's good it is that way. Andres McGee should have been charged with soliticiting and his garbage can of a gf should have been charged as a pimp. Anybody can fool anybody - don't we know that??
Personally, I wish UofL had gone to the mat for Pitino. Sure, I liked his coaching. He did things no one in history ever did - over and over again. He was also at the very penultimate top of his game. I smelt titles coming, I believe most of us did. Personally, I may or may not have liked him personally. I have a lot off friends who are assholes, lol, but I still love them. They have all done things ro endear me. I'm not sure Pitino would give spit to the fans or a common guy in the street, in spite of his homeless shelter in my home town. He's arrogant and this is what killed him. But that means diddly squat to me.
In a "Me too" world, identity politics finds a home at a system of belief which is all the NCAA is. We have guiltiiy and shamefully assumed the responsibility for acts where the perpetrators go free and the innocent pay. In any world, this is an abuse of responsibility. The publicity was just too much to take. We wanted it all to go away so badly, we cut off our noses to try and save our faces, which only accomplished a deeper mudhole and more permanent stain on the Louisville brand.
Beneath all this fancy bullshit we watch go back an forth, it is indeed that simple. We screwed up magnificently in our fear.
Personally, I wish UofL had gone to the mat for Pitino. Sure, I liked his coaching. He did things no one in history ever did - over and over again. He was also at the very penultimate top of his game. I smelt titles coming, I believe most of us did. Personally, I may or may not have liked him personally. I have a lot off friends who are assholes, lol, but I still love them. They have all done things ro endear me. I'm not sure Pitino would give spit to the fans or a common guy in the street, in spite of his homeless shelter in my home town. He's arrogant and this is what killed him. But that means diddly squat to me.
In a "Me too" world, identity politics finds a home at a system of belief which is all the NCAA is. We have guiltiiy and shamefully assumed the responsibility for acts where the perpetrators go free and the innocent pay. In any world, this is an abuse of responsibility. The publicity was just too much to take. We wanted it all to go away so badly, we cut off our noses to try and save our faces, which only accomplished a deeper mudhole and more permanent stain on the Louisville brand.
Beneath all this fancy bullshit we watch go back an forth, it is indeed that simple. We screwed up magnificently in our fear.
Nailed it. In the final analysis, we're where we are mostly due to:
- Sword fallers
- Pitino (and Jurich) haters
This is exactly what the BlueNecks want. Why don't you go over and join them on their boards. You would probably feel more comfortable.
Lol! This board has grown into nothing but 80% uk fans and 20% louisville fans with conspiracies. Sad.
Bluenecks want UofL to make a big time b-ball coaching hire? That’s surprising.
Brad Stevens is super duper interested followed by Donovan. Bob Knight has reached out as well. Seems like Tyra is part of the deep (blue) state.
Great post. You nailed the current state of affairs IMO. My only point of disagreement would be going to mat for Pitino. I had seen enough to go no further with him. OTOH I would have gone to the mat for TJ. We will just have to respectfully disagree on Pitino.
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But dudes, Pitino reported to Jurich and Jurich reported to Ramsey. BOT fired Pitino because he was responsible for the basketball program and the Addis Contract. Jurich was responsible for the over sight of Pitino, and Ramsey was responsible for the oversight of Jurich and the Cardinal Foundation and the Universities of Louisville's Accreditation and public image . Hence, Ramsey was incharge and he did nothing while his Minions failed. Pitino, Jurich and Ramsey all failed to properly execute thier job duties and responsibilities. The Triade failed, so it has been terminated with cause. BOT did the correct thing in removing them for the damages they inflicted to our beloved University of Louisville's honor and reputation. I rest my case.
You’d never make that case against Jurich. The second you “rested” it - you lose on summary judgment.
Simplistic thinking... Ramsey was not canned over anything to do with athletics. It was about the Foundation entirely and the related allegations, none of which are of any substance. If the guy pilfered so much money (or allowed it to be), why are we still waiting for U of L to sue the guy? Because they got nothing except Ramsey out of the job which is what they were really after.
The goons also wanted Jurich gone for any reason they could come up with. That reason was Pitino. Jurich did NOT unilaterally make hire and fire decisions re. Pitino, one of the State's highest paid employees. He was simply made the scapegoat.
You're in a cloud about this stuff.
Go post this crap over on the BlueNecks boards. They will eat it up and you will feel better.
I feel just fine about the direction the BOT took. Now we do not look like UNLV!
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Good for you. And I hope you got plenty of $$$ because the few of you like pig are gonna have to pay most of the bills going forward...
I am not sure why people get worked up over firing of Pitino. I can understand being upset with how they handle or botched it from a contract perspective, but not in the act of firing. He had to go there is no debating that. We can't as a fan base preach about not cheating and have 2 instances where assistants broke rules or knew of plans that clearly broke rules. The head guy had to go.
How Jurich was handled was ridiculous and petty by the BOT.
Louisville is at a cross roads which makes the handling of Jurich and this next basketball hire incredibly important. The fan base trusted Jurich to make the right call on the next coach. Whoever he hired the fan base would have supported. The fan base has no trust in whoever makes the next hire. Making the decision even tougher. At this point the fan base is going to be split on the next hire. Pitino wasn't a loved pick by everyone but since Jurich made the call the fans supported. The administration doesn't not have that luxury. The right hire all the past stuff goes away on the other hand the wrong hire has no chance and won't survive 2 years.
This has all the makings of a Texas or Tennessee football coaching search debacle. The fan base doesn't trust the administration and end up not liking the choice. Whoever they zero in on must be a guy that really wants it (not leveraging his current employer) that will energize the fan base. They better not leak it and get him. That is where it is going to be really tough in today's world especially in Louisville KY when BBN is going to do whatever they can to prevent Louisville from getting the right guy.
How Jurich was handled was ridiculous and petty by the BOT.
Louisville is at a cross roads which makes the handling of Jurich and this next basketball hire incredibly important. The fan base trusted Jurich to make the right call on the next coach. Whoever he hired the fan base would have supported. The fan base has no trust in whoever makes the next hire. Making the decision even tougher. At this point the fan base is going to be split on the next hire. Pitino wasn't a loved pick by everyone but since Jurich made the call the fans supported. The administration doesn't not have that luxury. The right hire all the past stuff goes away on the other hand the wrong hire has no chance and won't survive 2 years.
This has all the makings of a Texas or Tennessee football coaching search debacle. The fan base doesn't trust the administration and end up not liking the choice. Whoever they zero in on must be a guy that really wants it (not leveraging his current employer) that will energize the fan base. They better not leak it and get him. That is where it is going to be really tough in today's world especially in Louisville KY when BBN is going to do whatever they can to prevent Louisville from getting the right guy.
The HR angle is interesting, and this is one of the rare mentions of it. I read with interest some of the issues raised a few months ago in light of potential involvement by U of L's HR Dept. Such a department exists, and they have a spiffy website to prove it!
How, for example, did a functioning HR Dept not require that the Athletics Dept conduct regular performance reviews as was alleged of Jurich? And how did that Dept escape any responsibility for the administrative issues that were alleged? I've never witnessed an HR function that sat in the background while these core processes were mismanaged.
My guess is that U of L's HR folks were doing their jobs just fine, and that most of the garbage in the news was concocted by the goon squad as cover. I never heard that U of L was "without a director at the time"--and whose responsibility would that be if they were? Jurich?
Most of this ish will come back on the scumbags.
[As a postscript... Why do weeks and months continue to go by without a lawsuit filed to recover $$$ from Doc Ramsey? Same answer...]
Pitino was hired by Jurich to do what he did at UK. Instead he destroyed our program.
The basketball program was Pitino's . Everything that happened in it was his responsibility. He was a horrible CEO.
I don't think he was a horrible CEO. A CEO wears many hats and honestly he was great in the keys roles, coach, leader, personnel development and fundraiser. Where he failed is he became complacent/negligent with staff late at Louisville.
The water really gets muddy on the Bowen and Fair deal. I really think he choose to look the other way because how uniquely Bowen filled a black hole in the roster. The bottom line is his employee was involved in a deal that clearly violated NCAA rules while going through an investigation. I don't think that happens 5 years ago, his assistants then walk out of that room or never go to the meeting. We will never know but something culturally changed with his staff where they thought it was OK to be in that room and being OK with what was been planned.
The water really gets muddy on the Bowen and Fair deal. I really think he choose to look the other way because how uniquely Bowen filled a black hole in the roster. The bottom line is his employee was involved in a deal that clearly violated NCAA rules while going through an investigation. I don't think that happens 5 years ago, his assistants then walk out of that room or never go to the meeting. We will never know but something culturally changed with his staff where they thought it was OK to be in that room and being OK with what was been planned.
We're rehashing here... Pitino gets smeared by everyone for everything, but he wasn't the misfit that people try to argue. He had the typical shortcomings for high achievers: they can't make mistakes, and they will escape justice if they do. Those attributes impair your judgment and cause you to be reckless.
They don't however make you a cheater or cause you to wanna destroy what you built. People alleging that are simply emotional, vengeful, and simplistic in their thinking. Did Pitino deserve to keep his job?...No. But does that make him guilty of everything short of global warming?...That's delusional.
And these clowns didn't make lemonade out of lemons. They took a bad situation and are making it much worse. They deserve a good measure of the blame going forward...
They don't however make you a cheater or cause you to wanna destroy what you built. People alleging that are simply emotional, vengeful, and simplistic in their thinking. Did Pitino deserve to keep his job?...No. But does that make him guilty of everything short of global warming?...That's delusional.
And these clowns didn't make lemonade out of lemons. They took a bad situation and are making it much worse. They deserve a good measure of the blame going forward...
Except for the last paragraph, I agree.We're rehashing here... Pitino gets smeared by everyone for everything, but he wasn't the misfit that people try to argue. He had the typical shortcomings for high achievers: they can't make mistakes, and they will escape justice if they do. Those attributes impair your judgment and cause you to be reckless.
They don't however make you a cheater or cause you to wanna destroy what you built. People alleging that are simply emotional, vengeful, and simplistic in their thinking. Did Pitino deserve to keep his job?...No. But does that make him guilty of everything short of global warming?...That's delusional.
And these clowns didn't make lemonade out of lemons. They took a bad situation and are making it much worse. They deserve a good measure of the blame going forward...
Funny thing is it's their slapd!ck ties that make them the most suspect.
"Elite program," my a$$...
Pitino self destructed and his reward is avoiding the recent global warming here while fleeing to Miami.
Pitino never lived up to the expectations. I think he was very self serving. He was always bringing his old UK buddies into the program. But to me the worst thing Pitino and Jurich did was not switching to Nike at some point. By staying with Adidas which was to Pitino's personal benefit financially, it got to the point that we had no access to the top high school players so he had to cobble teams together. He could still win with less talent than other coaches but it kept us from being as successful as we should have been. He was under no pressure to change because we generated so much revenue. I liked having him as coach because of the name recognition but his time here will now be viewed as a disaster. Now he is gone, the program is in shambles, and the future is very uncertain.
The Nike v. adidas issue has been discussed here ad nauseum... As far as basketball recruiting, the adidas affiliation didn't impair us as much as you're describing for one reason: Pitino's system. Pitino proved--and never really disproved to my satisfaction--that he couldn't manage a OAD system. His iron fist and bootcamp approach did NOT appeal to five-star kids; the whole L1C4 concept is 180 degrees opposite. Ironically, what ended up frying Pitino was going against that. Bowen should have never been considered for recruitment for reasons that had nothing to do with money and skirting rules/laws.
I'd also argue that the adidas thing grew beyond Pitino. In the end, that was Jurich's baby, and he exploited it to the max financially. College athletics is about money, not talent. Jurich didn't care one iota whether high school kids preferred Nike. IMO we were going with adidas permanently even if Pitino wanted Nike.
These are more examples of misplaced blame as far as Pitino. I don't agree with the "disaster" or "shambles" characterization, nor do I agree that all of this stuff is appropriately laid at Pitino's feet. He's just the convenient whipping boy at this point...
We will just have to agree to disagree about which shoe company we should be with but the biggest issue that it affects is still basketball recruiting where we have mostly floundered. With other sports it doesn't matter that much. I understand the reasons Jurich embraced Adidas but if Pitino had been affiliated with Nike instead of Adidas we would have been a Nike school. I would be more than willing to give up some of the money we would have lost by being with Nike because I would rather have access to the top recruits instead.
Very valid point. Adidas is a soccer shoe company first and foremost.
I don't have any issue with a difference of opinions except when they're couched in bad info... "Floundering" recruiting as yet another example.
I know you're a Scout guy... U of L has had a Top Ten class four of the last five years per that service, the one exception being 2016 when we only signed King who was a five-star. For a coach who didn't rely on talent alone, that level of recruiting was easily good enough for Pitino to put good teams on the floor. (Arguably, we've been underperforming considering how Scout has rated our talent.)
What I'll agree with is that Pitino should have been dismissed for reckless behavior in the course of doing his job, i.e., as coach. Beyond that, we're going to disagree or you need more compelling facts...
It seems like Pitino has always had top 10 recruiting classes but still not many top players in those classes. Blackshear was an example of how our recruiting ranking was overrated and he was hardly the only one. The talent deficit showed by how few players Pitino put in the NBA. Bottom line is most years, we simply had no real access to the top 20 high school players.
I agree with some of this, disagree with other parts.
He won a title and had multiple FF's - strong seeding most years. What expectations did he fail to live up too between the lines? During the same time frame only a very small handful of teams had more post season success.
Cobbling teams together - this is an interesting point. Sure, the recruiting classes were always ranked okay overall - but other than Samardo I can't recall a Top 10 guy ever playing here. And even his rating seemed to slide his SR year, maybe he didn't even stay Top 10?
There were "projects", (Mahmoud, Matz) and a few transfers coming in - some that worked out great (Luke, C Smith), others that didn't move the needle (Delk). And it got annoying watching walk-ons log meaningful minutes because they were either more ready to play for Rick or they were used to light a fire under some other 4 star player that wasn't cutting it. We also witnessed motivational tactics that failed completely with guys like Shaq Aaron, Anton Gill, or maybe failed partially with guys like Jennings and Caracter.
Cobble teams together - I like it, I think that was well-said!
Pitino landed very few Top 20 high school kids at LPT. FOUR McD All Americans, to be exact: Walker, Turner, Delk, and Mercer. The kids he was getting here were on par with his LPT recruits--around four stars, by today's rankings.
Pitino was probably regarded as the most successful college basketball coach in the mid-90s, and he accomplished that with the same level of talent he had here. Recruiting wasn't as much his problem as it probably was communicating with those kids as he got older. (The same problem that Denny Crum had a generation earlier, so much so that HIS recruiting declined precipitously...)
Pitino was probably regarded as the most successful college basketball coach in the mid-90s, and he accomplished that with the same level of talent he had here. Recruiting wasn't as much his problem as it probably was communicating with those kids as he got older. (The same problem that Denny Crum had a generation earlier, so much so that HIS recruiting declined precipitously...)
I'd think the inability to relate/communicate - whatever it was, resulted in a few of those kids...some high level guys transferring out of the program, which impacted the usefulness of his recruiting ratings. Some may not have transferred, but simply didn't live up to the rating, or expectation.
What I mean is, if Shaq Aaron is transferring and giving the Cards absolutely nothing, then the recruiting class he was part of wasn't as good as it was rated, because he was the jewel and produced nothing in one year. This is one guy. But it did seem that we had a number of transfers, though I don't have time to get the list.
And what is the impact on future recruiting when HS recruits hear about what happened to a high profile recurit like Aaron, maybe a Blackshear, not having the success individually that was expected? Word gets out.
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You are exactly right! It is not "mostly"up to the Athletic Director to hire and fire coaches or hold them accountable for their actions or many scandals......
Delusion is a strong force in this world
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