Pitino, Louisville, and the NCAA: Laid and Paid

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently announced a sting designed to expose “the dark underbelly of college basketball”. Juvenal initially assumed this meant that some unfortunate FBI agent was going to lift Charles Barkley’s jersey. Instead, our tax dollars are being used to investigate how our other tax dollars are being used to prop up a corrupt NCAA system that apparently exists to get young athletes laid and paid.

One of J. Edgar Hoover’s best men, U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, explained a multi-year investigation that uncovered fraud, pay-for-play, and kickback allegations in the men’s basketball programs of multiple public institutions of “higher learning”. We are hearing the inevitable cries of how the powers that be at these institutions are shocked (shocked!), and seeing the suspension and firing of assistant coaches and other staff. The implicated institutions, so far, are:

• The University of Louisville (2017 budget – $1.28 billion; federal and state funding – over $200 million);
• The University of Arizona (2017 budget – $2.51 billion; federal and state funding – over $567 million);
• Auburn University (2017 budget – $1.27 billion; federal and state funding – over $270 million);
• Oklahoma State University (2017 budget – $1.29 billion; federal and state funding – over $215 million);
• The University of Southern California (not public, but 2016 budget – $4.47 billion; federal and state funding – not available).

The highest profile, and most salacious, of these allegations is that the University of Louisville coordinated with Adidas, its athletic sponsor, to pay a prized recruit $100,000 to become a Louisville “student-athlete” and join its basketball program. This, apparently, was a cheap down payment for Adidas to get the “student-athlete” to rep for Adidas after (as is expected) he goes to the NBA.

This allegation comes on the heels of another recruiting scandal in which a madam – yes, that kind of madam – wrote a book about having worked with a University of Louisville coach to provide recruits (including some under age) with strippers and prostitutes (including some under age, and including two of her own daughters).

One said she was paid roughly $300 for a night of stripping and one sexual encounter with a recruit. Another woman, who asked to go by the name Mandy, said she went to a party at Minardi Hall [Louisville’s athletic dorm] in 2010 or 2011. Mandy estimated that she was 17 at the time and had yet to graduate from high school.

She said Powell explained the purpose of the party: “Basically to help people come to Louisville.”

Mandy said there were seven to nine girls at the party the night she danced. When they first arrived, she said, [Katina] Powell [the madam] led them into a room where there was just one man. After changing clothes, Mandy said, Powell sent the women in pairs into what looked like a large dorm room that was packed with 10 to 15 men, most of whom appeared to be basketball players.

“It would be a lot of guys, and they all had chairs,” Mandy said. “I was excited because Peyton Siva was there.”

Mandy said Siva, a four-year point guard who played on the Cardinals’ 2013 NCAA championship team, autographed her chest, a detail Powell also recalled when asked about that evening. Siva, who also was mentioned in Powell’s book, could not be reached for comment.

Mandy estimated she made another $400 to $500 that night in tips, as the men threw one-dollar bills at her feet.

Mandy said that none of the dancers that evening had sex with the players and questioned Powell’s claims about sex-for-cash “side deals,” although she said it was possible dancers had done so without her knowledge.

Powell, in her book and in the interview with Outside the Lines, said Louisville recruits JaQuan Lyle, Antonio Blakeney, Jordan Mickey and Terry Rozier all had sex during their recruiting visits. Lyle, Blakeney and Mickey either could not be reached for comment or declined to comment.

Louisville is – or was – coached by Rick Pitino, a true basketball blue-blood, who earlier led one of the NCAA’s most storied programs at the University of Kentucky, and in his college career won two NCAA championships amidst seven Final Four appearances. (When not coaching at the college level, he also served as head coach of the NBA’s Boston Celtics and New York Knicks.) Did he reach the peak of the college coaching profession by being an outlier in terms of his shady recruiting practices, or because he perfected the model of getting his recruits laid and paid?