Louisville’ college basketball team bans itself from post season

Things seem to be going okay for Louisville’s basketball team; they are 18–4 and almost certainly were going to the college basketball playoffs (also called March Madness¹, you will hear a lot about this in the coming month). Except… apparently one of the Louisville coaches paid prostitutes to “dance and have sex” with potential college recruits.

Why this matters: Louisville is one of the big powerhouse schools in college basketball. It’s coach, Rick Pitino, is among the winningest coaches of all time. Before this scandal broke last year Louisville was known for a fairly clean record in terms of recruiting. Louisville is applying this post season ban on themselves; the college officiating body NCAA has not finished their investigation yet.

Sports comment: Isn’t this just Louisville’s way of trying to avoid more serious punishment? Yes, yes it is. Louisville appears to be guilty of serious recruiting violations at a fairly high level. In other college sports this would mean a) loss of scholarships, b) restrictions on recruiting in the future, and c) not being allowed to play in tournaments for a few years. Usually the head coach gets fired too. Louisville has been non-cooperative and has continually stated “it wasn’t the school, it was just one bad coach”.

Snarky comment: sucks for the Seniors on the team; they didn’t get the illegal recruiting benefits *and* now they can’t play in March Madness. There are two seniors who transferred to the school this year in order to finish their careers with a winning team and get into the NCAA Tournament/March Madness.