The FBI’s criminal complaint that shook the college basketball world Tuesday and led to 10 arrests included accounts of three meetings in Las Vegas.

… The Review-Journal on Wednesday reviewed the complaint and found three meetings in Las Vegas between March and July involving coaches from the University of Arizona, University of Louisville and University of Southern California.

During the Pac-12 men’s tournament in March, Arizona assistant Emanuel “Book” Richardson met for dinner in an unnamed Las Vegas restaurant …

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Las Vegas Review/Journal

Karl Marx once famously proclaimed, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The NCAA corollary is, if anything, a more corrupt, “From each according to his marketability, to each according to our whim.” “Need” has nothing to do with it. In practice, the few revenue-producing sports subsidize the less-popular programs, all while funneling billions of dollars into the NCAA’s coffers. This money funds a vast bureaucratic apparatus whose chief function is to make sure that all available money goes where the NCAA wants it to go — to the NCAA and to its members schools. Their profit motive is sacred. Their greed is boundless.

… All the sad sad pieces in the local rags ’bout how the University of Louisville was lookin’ so good and then hell all hell broke loose and now look at the mess we’re in… Boo hoo! Everybody’s cryin’ for UL, for Louisville, for the state of Kentucky… Everybody’s favorite current phrase: Fall from grace…

What state of grace? The school went from being a lowly commuter campus to a jockshop. All under the larcenous eye of the ex-president — a guy the school is likely to sue in order to see if it can recover some of the funds he, er, took.

No, UD doesn’t think valedictories are quite the right tone … For a university that… Well, let’s tell everyone what you did, UL.

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Short version: YOU WERE A VERY VERY BAD BOY AND THEN YOU GOT CAUGHT.

Longer version: You had a very long run as a bad boy and you made a lot of money. Your bad boy president and his cronies made a lot of money. Your bad boy basketball coach and his staff and some of his players made a lot of money. You won a lot of games by bribing the best high school players to commit to UL. You ran a house of prostitution inside one of your dorms and provided the prostitutes to sixteen year old recruits and their fathers. Bad, bad, bad. Naughty, naughty, naughty.

Still, for a long time you didn’t get caught, and your professors were silent and your trustees were silent and your students whooped at the games and your coach collected his annual seven million dollars and everything was great. And then you got caught.

That is, like bad boys everywhere, you gambled. You gambled that you wouldn’t get caught. You were Kentucky Gamblers, and this is the only valedictory you’re getting, courtesy of Merle:

… This Kentucky Gambler planned to get rich quick.

… But a gambler never seems to stop till he loses all he’s got
And with a money-hungry fever, I played on
I played till I’d lost all I’d won, I was right back where I’d started from…

Rockville Man Allegedly Stole from
Bank While He Was its President

She lives just down the street – it’s a short, charming, tree-lined walk – from this site.

The White Flint Mall site could emerge as one of several Montgomery County locations suggested for an Amazon headquarters, County Executive Ike Leggett told real estate agents on Thursday.

The county is putting the finishing touches on its pitch to Amazon and will submit the proposal by mid-October…

Wow.

I know. Unlikely.

But a girl can dream.

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Plus, like a lot of people, I buy almost everything via Amazon. Once it’s steps away, I won’t even have to order. Just stroll over there and pick it off the shelves.

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Oh, but by then I will have sold my insanely over-valued house to some Amazon exec…!

It’s called democracy. Europe’s people and its institutions are banning the burqa. Austria is the latest country to do this, and the results of a recent poll suggest Denmark could be next.

Less than a quarter of Danes oppose a ban on the burqa and niqab, according to a new survey.

A majority of the population support banning the two types of Islamic veil in public, according to an opinion poll carried out by Epinion on behalf of broadcaster DR.

According to the poll, 62 percent said they support a full ban on wearing the burqa and niqab in public, while 23 percent said the veils should continue to be allowed.

These figures are in line with surveys in most other European countries.

Social Democrat MP Mattias Tesfaye, a member of parliament’s immigration committee (Udlændinge- og Integrationsudvalget), told DR that he was not surprised by the result of the poll.

“I am provoked myself when I see a woman in a burqa. Not so much by the woman, but by what it stands for. I actually perceive it as a form of prison,” Tesfaye said.

It’s been fascinating to watch the … uncomfortable split between intellectuals who persistently lecture the population and the courts of Europe about their appalling reactionary ways… about how all decent people obviously see imprisoned women among us as a signal instance of human rights … and the actual voice of the people and the courts across the continent. (And yes – there’s this.). Large majorities of people, it turns out, don’t consider it their civic duty to collude in the forced or the unforced public annihilation of a country’s women.

But this missive – on the eve of Wear Red to Support the University of Louisville day – seems to ask for it. So let’s go.

It’s written by a local journalist/UL booster, in light of that school’s final burial under the weight of its massively corrupt leadership over many years. It argues that the way to respond to an institution that has thoroughly disgraced itself, and because of that disgrace marches smartly toward bankruptcy, unaccreditation, and the death penalty, is with ever more fervent support. Let us see how it tries to make this rather counterintuitive case.

If You Stop Supporting the University of Louisville, You’ll Hurt Us All

is the headline, a species of appeal reminiscent of Every Time You Masturbate, God Kills a Kitten. Sure, sure, stop supporting UL, and watch the entire city of Louisville die.

It may sound counterintuitive, but now is the time for University of Louisville fans and alumni to rally around their athletic teams, their academic programs, the students and faculty.

The future of the school and the city depends on it.

The cancer is gone. Cut out Wednesday morning in about 10 minutes worth of meetings during which interim President Greg Postel essentially fired basketball coach Rick Pitino and athletic director Tom Jurich.

Well, yes, he’s right that it sounds counterintuitive, so give him points for realizing that what he’s about to write is the essence of the uphill battle. But given that UL is (indulge us) primarily an academic institution, and that depraved indifference to that fact destroyed it, the writer ought to have rearranged his list of three to feature UL’s students.

Not even the faculty deserves a primary place on this list, because the bizarrely passive and silent UL faculty bears its share of the blame for this outcome. Most universities under threat produce people like Jay Smith; most not under threat have always at the ready people like John Banzhaf; most are capable of generating not just gadflies and op/ed writers, but coalitions of the concerned who produce petitions and protests, etc. Maybe I missed it, but UL’s professors just sat there. They deserve condemnation, not support.

The writer should have removed athletics from his list altogether. Several larcenous administrations also did a lot of damage to the school, to be sure; but you don’t get to spend decades bellowing your support for criminally insane seven million dollar coaches as they and their assistant coaches slash the school’s jugular, and then just turn around and go on bellowing for their replacements. Which brings SOS to her next point:

The cancer is gone. Cut out Wednesday morning in about 10 minutes …

Here’s where we know the writer is not only an emotional blackmailer, but a bit of a con man. We’re cured! Lord, I can walk again! Praise the lord! Turns out it was just a matter of scalpeling that pesky bit of cancer around the locker room …

Fraid not. You don’t get to declare the game over and start a new one. Remember South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions? The University of Louisville needs something like that.

But after embarrassment after embarrassment in the basketball program — including this involvement in what appears to be the biggest basketball scandal since the 1950s point-shaving affairs — why should you support the university?

Simply because you should.

These aren’t embarrassments. They’re crimes, and as accessory to decades of crimes, UL needs to pull back and shut down a bit and do some thinking. It’s far too soon to rally the troops, especially if the troops are only about athletics.

Failure of the KFC Yum Center — which is a very real possibility if folks stop attending Louisville basketball games — hurts us all. Everyone.

The comical, trashy name of that arena is indeed an embarrassment, and it speaks volumes about the corporate lowering UL – a university – has been pleased to undergo. And I’m afraid it ain’t much of an argument to point out that since the UL decided it was smart to assume a $700 million debt to get its finger lickin’ yummy thing built, it’s now our responsibility to sit there watching bribed players and criminal coaches running around a court.

The rest of it’s just funny, like one of those Rodney Dangerfield routines in which he lists his many misfortunes.

Members of the past administration had looted the university’s fundraising arm of millions of dollars in payouts for themselves and their friends.

The governor’s ham-handed attempt to reorganize the school’s board of trustees left its accreditation in jeopardy.

The basketball program was already headed for probation because it was paying for hookers for teenage recruits.

But here’s the good news.

SOS asks: At this point, who’s hanging around for the good news? There isn’t any good news – it’s all bad, and UL is going to have to take the fall it has abundantly rigged up for itself. The only advice SOS has for UL right now does indeed have to do with its students. Attend another institution.

We did it! We made the NBA look pure!

“There’s a reason I coach in the NBA. I never wanted to be a college coach,” [Golden State Warriors Coach Steve] Kerr said. “I don’t immerse myself in that stuff. The NBA is very pure.”

Thank you, University of Louisville, and all your great affiliated institutions.

The Chronicle of Higher Education hoovers up all the University of Louisville scandals – financial, sexual, sportal – of the last few years (it’s a lengthy article) and pronounces the whole bloody thing incomprehensible.

Not only is the current implosion of UL not incomprehensible, UD will now draw up a menu of options your school – should it want to imitate UL – can choose from in order to get there. Or get close to there. Your mileage may vary.

1. Be a public university.

2. In a southern state.

3. In a corrupt state.

4. When I say corrupt, I mean corrupt all the way down, from the governor to pretty much everyone else who lives in the state. I mean madly flagrantly insanely corrupt.

5. Appoint tyrannical greedy presidents and fail to find – over many years – any way to get rid of them. Make sure the trustees are chaired by the president’s closest friend.

6. Make sure these presidents – and their many greedy administrator cronies – are too busy buying real estate with the endowment or ripping off the program they’re supposed to be running or whatever to give a shit about your sports program.

7. Hire, at staggering salaries and with punishing buyout conditions, corrupt coaches and athletic directors.

8. Respond to all dissent within the institution, and all looming audits, and other stuff like that, with rage, paranoia, and threats.

9. When interviewed by the local press, present yourself (we’re talking the president here) as a local hick made good, a hayseed pulled up by your own bootstraps and by the glorious power of our lord and savior.

10. Once fired, everyone – president, administrators, athletics staff, program directors – files lawsuits. This, coupled with the now massively overextended sports program, bankrupts the university forever.

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UD thanks Wendy for the image.

Can they really have fired Rick Pitino?

And how many millions (buyout/defamation suit/other miscellaneous legal shit) is it going to cost them, now that much of UL’s endowment has been allegedly picked off by its last president?

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And the capo di tutt’i capi too????

More buyout millions.

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To recap: The board of trustees is about to sue the last president of the university and some of his comrades in – er – missing fundism to try to get some – er – missing funds back from them. The eyes of the world, the Justice Department, and the FBI, are upon their indescribably filthy sports program. They’ve just fired their famous basketball coach and their athletic director. They can expect humongous lawsuits from them. They can also expect various sports business deals to collapse and cost them more millions. They can expect enrollment to drop like a stone, along with attendance at basketball and football games. They’ve got some desperate nonentity in there as interim president to handle all of this.

Time for UL to apply for federal disaster aid.

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[Pitino’s lawyer Steven] Pence promises that [the University of Louisville] ‘won’t fire Pitino without a bare-knuckle fight’….

According to Pence, Louisville would be in a legal fight over $44 million it would owe Pitino as part of his buyout clause.

Pitino’s always baring himself. A bare-knuckle fight; a bare-ass restaurant meal…

[If you didn’t expect this outcome, you’re like people who are still] stunned to learn that a game as inherently violent as football would lead to life-altering issues among players from repeated concussions and blows to the head.

Far worse, you’re like Louisville’s superscummy basketball coach, who says he’s “completely shocked” by the shocking corruption in university basketball. As completely shocked as he was by the whorehouse being run in a dorm lived in by basketball players and visited by recruits and their families.

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So here’s UD‘s take. American university students are being trained to be Italians. Italians are living the good life and they don’t give a rat’s ass that their entire world is howlingly corrupt. In a New Yorker article about the sordid Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, Adam Gopnik noted French anxiety about

what many in Paris see as the “Italianization” of French life — the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor …

The University of Louisville is the avant-garde: Can you grow a university whose students heartily endorse, and fork all their tuition money over to, Rick Berlusconi Strauss-Kahn Pitino? His sextortion, his whores for sixteen year old recruits and their fathers, his stuffed envelopes for sports agents in Las Vegas hotel rooms? Can you guarantee a university whose students will rush to the bookstore and buy out Pitino’s many books about how to be ethical?

The entire financial foundation of the University of Louisville rests on a bet that there’s no bottom – that students and alumni will be able — FOREVER — to look at a guy who could give Jerry Sandusky a run for his money and say WE LOVE YOU RICK. TELL US HOW MUCH MORE YOU WANT US TO COUGH UP FOR YOUR SALARY.

It’s a solid bet. This is Kentucky, after all.

The beyond-thrilling news that women are now permitted to drive cars in Saudi Arabia (What’s next? Walk down the street without a male guardian?) reminds UD of her favorite edict from that country, known to all as The Adult Breastfeeding Fatwa.

Since an unrelated man and a woman being together in the same room is strictly forbidden…

Sheikh ‘Abd Al-Muhsin Al-‘Obikan, an advisor at the Saudi Justice Ministry, recently issued a fatwa allowing the breastfeeding of adults. The fatwa is aimed at enabling an unrelated man and woman to be secluded in the same room, a situation which Islam considers forbidden gender mixing. The rationale behind the fatwa is that breastfeeding creates a bond of kinship between the man and woman, … thus making it acceptable for them to be together in seclusion.

The order generated a lot of controversy. (Egypt even saw some nipple retraction.)

One columnist pointed to a paradox, namely that the fear of gender-mixing is prompting clerics to encourage lewd behaviors like women breastfeeding grown men.

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In an earlier post, UD imagined Rate My Expressers entries for women-taught university courses in Saudi Arabia:

Why weren’t any head coaches implicated [in today’s university bribery scandal]? Christian Dawkins, who was working to start his own sports-management company, may have provided the beginnings of an answer in a wiretapped phone call: He said the best way to reach players was through assistant coaches because “the head coach … ain’t willing to [take bribes] ’cause they’re making too much money.“

This blog is ambivalent about the predictable call for the University of Louisville to get the death penalty (it’d probably be curtains for the whole university, since without its sports programs …), now that its totally stinky irredeemable stinkiness (there’s a reason they call it the U of Smell) has yet again wafted its way across the landscape of this great country of ours. When it comes to Louisville, it’s very much as George immortally put it to Martha: There isn’t an abomination award going that you haven’t won. The only thing left for that university to win is the death penalty.

One observer claims that the career of UL’s super-louche basketball coach will “almost certainly … end in a fall of Shakespearian dimension.” (That should be Shakespearean.). But if you start in the gutter and end in the gutter does that count as Shakespearean? Tragic?

And why are we here at University Diaries ambivalent? Because without the sex drugs and rock and roll we get from UL we’d suffer a fall of Shakespearean dimension.

… on the big ongoing – and apparently expanding – university corruption story.