Rick Pitino Finally Too Corrupt for Corrupt College Basketball

If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. Also, you’re not trying to build a perennial winning major sports program at a Division I college. In basketball even more so than football, there are a handful of nationally ranked high school players you need on your team if you want to be a Final Four contender. So, you cheat to get them to sign. Cheat to get them labeled qualified for college. Cheat to keep them for a full year on your campus. Almost everybody involved either assists, helps to cover up, or looks the other way. They did at Penn State for Sandusky fucking boys in the shower. You know they do so to land a five star power forward recruit with cash and whores.

Rick Pitino has been an extremely successful college basketball coach. Most recently in a long term tenure with Louisville, a college known for its perennial top tier basketball program. That equals a ton of prestige for the school. And even better than prestige, cash. There aren’t many guys pulling in five million a year in Kentucky on a guaranteed ten year contract. That’s pay for performance. Pitino performed and stayed a step ahead of direct connection to various scandals in his program. Including a recent case of an assistant coach hiring hookers for recruits. That may cost Louisville the 2013 title in a give-back to perhaps the most hypocritical organization in the nation, the NCAA.

Pitino now appears to be caught red-handed helping shift $100,000 from a bunch of foul interests like Adidas, a sports agent, and an AAU Florida basketball to a kid named Brian Bowen who agreed to choose Louisville to continue his academic mission. Pitino never denies corrupt shit is taking place. He’s fairly slick. He merely denies that he has any role in any of it. He’s shocked to find gambling in Casablanca.

The NCAA has managed to make billions for the major colleges and universities decade after decade while serving as chief moral caretaker for tons of young men they exploit for free labor. They’re like fashion industry chiefs hosting human rights galas while ignoring the sweatshop twelve year olds in Indonesia producing all their goods. The prevailing media and consumer interests couldn’t care less. They want roids in sports and they want cheating coaches because they want top notch entertainment value.

Pitino may resemble a Vegas casino front man, but he’s a product of the system every bit as much as Bowen asking for a hundred grand for his family before deciding which school he’s going to make millions in the coming year. In terms of federal FBI investigations, this seems like a monster waste of time. Victimless crime. Even the Louisville area hookers are doing well by the status quo.

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