Extra Onions: Reacting to Rick Pitino
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...August 12, 2009
Extra Onions is a roundup of college hoops stuff from around the ‘Webs. As always, email or follow me on Twitter
to send along links I should see. Some days, when warranted, E.O.
merely highlights the best of what’s out there on one major topic.
Today is one such day.
• Chas Rich, FanHouse: "For a while, what information and news that had been leaking really
made this look like a completely crazy woman going after Pitino. Her attorney had quit,
and the court had to appoint one for her. She lacked much credibility
as she claimed that Pitino raped her that night, and then said he
sexually assaulted her at Tim Sypher’s condo at their second meeting –
while Sypher was upstairs. And then married Sypher six months later. Rick
Pitino will still be the coach at Louisville. He will still be
successful as a coach. His reputation and image, though, are toast. The
creepiness. The weirdness. Everything about this is just ugly, tawdry
and sleazy."
• Mike Miller, Beyond the Arc: "But it’s also a reminder — as if sports fans needed another one this
summer — that we really don’t know our sports figures, no matter how
much larger than life they may seem. Rick Pitino is one of the college basketball’s best coaches, a man who
ressurected Kentucky basketball, re-built Louisville and is the only
coach to ever take three different schools to the Final Four. But he’s
no longer on a pedestal. Not ever again. [...] Some might say this simply reinforces the idea that sports figures are
capable of mistakes like everyone else. Others would say this is why
it’s foolish to elevate them in the first place."
• Truzenzuzex, A Sea of Blue: "These are the kinds of personal actions that cannot be written off
by a man in Pitino’s position as a "personal matter" — he is in charge
of young men’s lives, they look to him for guidance not just in
basketball but in life, and he must find a way to turn this negative
into a positive with respect to the young men under his care. Handling
this the right way, being up front and honest about it, is something he
should have done months ago, but now absolutely must do now in order to
begin the recovery process from this unfortunate indiscretion.
In the end, this is a body blow to the personal repuation of a sure
Hall of Fame coach. Rick Pitino is a big part of Kentucky’s legacy,
and I will love him forever for his years as a Wildcat, even as I must
consider him the opposition as coach of the Cardinals. I hope that he
can summon up his formidable will and raise himself back up from this
knockdown.
I was not happy to hear this news, and my heart is heavy."
• Mike Rutherford, Card Chronicle: "This has to be the most infamous restaurant sex since Humpty got busy in a Burger King bathroom."
• Card Game: "The observer doesn’t believe this is the scenario the Keep Louisville Weird promoters had in mind when they launched the marketing program."
• Rush The Court: "With what we know now, can we say that these moves were just
coincidences? That Richard Pitino simply wanted to get out from under
his father’s shadow and stake his own claim? That Ralph Willard wanted
less responsibility as a coach, was ready to leave a place he loved,
and just wanted the chance to coach with his old friend again? Or were
these moves representative of a head coach and a father who was getting
a few affairs in order? Was Pitino getting his son Richard out of the
media maelstrom he knew was probably coming, asking an old friend and
protege in Billy Donovan to take care of his son and let him continue
his coaching education in case these personal matters took a bad turn?
Was Pitino bringing in a high-quality coach and old friend like Willard
to be his lead assistant and possibly take over Pitino’s Cardinal
program in case the Sypher situation started to blow up and Pitino
needed to leave the spotlight for a while? Knowing what a calculating
man that Rick Pitino is, it’s hard — in fact, next to impossible — for
me to think that these moves were simply coincidental. No, from our
view – Rick Pitino knew this thing was percolating and likely to
explode, and he was making sure certain valuables were protected."
• Rob Dauster, Ballin Is A Habit: "And that doesn’t come close to describing how bizarre this story is. Seriously, go read it.
I don’t know who comes off worse. Karen Sypher looks like an absolute
nut job, but what about Pitino? Cheats on his wife with a random broad
he meets at a restaurant (on the restaurant floor, nonetheless) while
his assistant is present, pays her to get an abortion, and then stands
by as she marries a friend and colleague. Can you get much scumbaggier
than that?"
• Dan Shanoff, Sporting Blog: "Yikes." (Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.)
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