The University of (adidas/ESPN) at Louisville?

Uh huh.

 

As to the charges that the Louisville athletics department is less than honorable, what say you, Doc?

 

I don’t give a shit. I’m lampooning you.

 

I don't think it was the interim president taking charge. I think it was the hooker scandal and then the FBI report being publicly released right after the probation announcement. At that point Louisville had to take action and Jurich and Pitino had to go.

 

Sounds like a typical high-end college sports institution?

 

College Basketball Made Louisville, Then Broke It

A good Bloomberg story on the topic. Details how the program managed to rob the taxpayers blind.

Jurich has to be best example ever of an AD being given excess authority over not just a university, but an entire city. How else do you explain him being able to do such things as quash the city's agreement to bring in an NBA team (the Hornets), or get the City to succumb to such an insanely one-sided "you pay the costs and incur all the risk, but we take home the profit" arena deal:

 

That's quite an indictment of a story. The AD doesn't report to the president of the university but to an advisory board that he controls. Wow. That's about all you need to know about what matters there.

 

I keep hearing about how a successful athletic program leads to a better academic institution. The article points out that Louisville is rated as the 165th on the US News and World Report rankings of national universities. The public institutions tied with them are the University of Maryland - Baltimore, Missouri State and U Cal Merced, athletic powerhouses all. Did Louisville really need to pour all those resources and effort into the athletic department to achieve an academic ranking of 165th or could they have concentrated on improving their academic programs?

 

And the University's now filed its counter lawsuit against Pitino.

 

I find it hard to believe that Louisville is the only school that has that arrangement. How common is it?

And I know this frequently happens. Big time athletic departments are generally separate legal entities from the University. Basically this is done for the athletic department institutions to be exempt from a lot of state laws that regulate the university. At times you will read about the athletic department owing the university money for something like a new training facility. It happens because it is a device for the athletic department to get money for construction without going to the state legislature.

The aforementioned is frequently shady. But many times the athletic department does not use the university accounting system, which means no transparency. I went to school that received money for an additional athletic scholarship at a minor sport. They did not increase the scholarship budget but used it for membership dues to a basketball coach's country club. But if the athletic department keeps the books who is to know?

 

It's official: Rick Pitino and Louisville are going to war