Louisville coach Rick Pitino shouts instructions to his team during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Cal State Northridge, Tuesday Dec. 23, 2014, in Louisville, Ky. Louisville won 80-55. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) No one should be surprised that Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino is skipping today's Atlantic Coast Conference preseason media event in Charlotte, N.C., on the advice of legal counsel. His lawyers understandably believe it is not in his best interest to answer questions about his program's alleged use of strippers and prostitutes to recruit future Cardinals.
Not that Slick Rick hasn't embraced this "Silence is Golden" defense before when the subject has turned to inappropriate sex. The married father of five coughed up $3,000 worth of his own gold, silver or cash in an attempt to buy the silence of Karen Wise following a brief adulterous encounter between the two in 2003.
When Wise - who eventually married Pitino staffer Tim Sypher - kept attempting to blackmail the coach, demanding cars and such in exchange for continued silence, he finally went to the feds and Sypher went to jail, where she is scheduled to remain until 2017.
Given that bit of nastiness, and the fact that Ms. Sypher always maintained that the three grand from the devout Catholic Pitino was for an abortion, one might assume that Slick Rick would swear off any hint of sexual impropriety by himself or anyone within his program for the rest of his coaching career, if not his life.
Instead, the Cardinals are up to their beaks in an alleged sex scandal that threatens to make their basketball dorm, Billy Minardi Hall - named for Pitino's late brother-in-law and best friend who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack - sound much more like the Redbird Ranch brothel.
But as unsettling as is the news that Pitino's former director of basketball operations Andre McGee (who also played for Slick Rick at U of L) allegedly paid self-proclaimed madam Katina Powell a total of $10,000 for hookers and strippers to entertain recruits, news that Pitino is allowing two current Cards to attend today's ACC media event without him is almost as disappointing.
Never mind that the players in question, senior transfers Damion Lee and Trey Lewis, were beginning their college basketball careers at Drexel and Cleveland State, respectively, at the height of McGee's alleged recruiting wrongs.
In that sense, U of L's decision to make them available to the ACC media is genius. McGee was gone before they arrived, his damage reportedly done from 2010 to 2014, which was the height of Rick's renaissance, the Cards reaching the Final Four in 2012 and winning the national title a year later.
Lee and Lewis probably honestly can say they don't know McGee and were never recruited by McGee. And should someone still question them about the scandal, they can reply: "We've been told not to comment on an ongoing NCAA investigation."
Which, of course, is also what Pitino should be saying today. When you're being paid $4.5 million a season, you can surely swallow your pride enough to attend your conference's media day. Especially when you are one of the four highest profile coaches - along with Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina's Roy Williams and Syracuse's Jim Boeheim - in what is arguably the nation's most tradition-rich basketball conference.
Merely consider that beginning with Duke's 2001 title, ACC member schools - either those in the league then or those there now - have won a total of eight of the last 15 NCAA titles. Basketball is to the ACC what football is to the SEC. It's water and oxygen rolled into one.
Beyond that, if Williams can show up to answer questions in the face of his school's ongoing academic scandal, and Boeheim can face the music for the nine-game suspension he must serve this season for NCAA wrongs, surely Pitino can drop by long enough to say "No comment" to anything involving Stripper/Hooker-gate.
This isn't about Pitino's ability to coach basketball. Slick Rick isn't in the Hall of Fame for what took place with Wise/Sypher on a tabletop at Louisville's Porcini restaurant 12 years ago. He's in the Hall of Fame because he's the only coach to win national championships at two programs: Louisville and Kentucky.
But coaching and mentoring are two different things. How can any coach send his players off to meet the media without him during a scandal? Why would any parent let a son play for such a coward in the future?
Does anyone think for a minute that ACC officials wouldn't have instructed the media to limit their questions to basketball only? Does anyone think Pitino hasn't been around long enough to artfully handle such questions? And if the school really believes he should be exempt, why shouldn't the players?
Those defending Slick Rick are surely aware that Cardinals basketball generated more than $20 million for the university last season, the most in country. And in his defense, Pitino steadfastly has denied any knowledge of McGee's activities, though some would say not knowing is as bad as or worse than condoning such behavior.
But this is the same school that not only stood by Pitino during his own tawdry sex scandal but also rehired former football coach Bobby Petrino, who previously was dismissed by Arkansas for an inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife.
Whether completely fair or not, Louisville is quickly earning a reputation as a school where respect for women is a distant second, or fifth, to winning football and men's basketball games.
"I will not resign and let you down," Pitino defiantly wrote to his supporters on his website last week.
Louisville shouldn't give him that chance. It should fire him, which would at least allow Slick Rick never again to feel the need to skip the ACC's media event.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com