If they had, the NCAA would look the other way – as they seem to have done with the University of North Carolina – because the offense would have been university-wide. If it’s not restricted to athletes – if it’s official campus-wide crapulousness – then the NCAA says fine, fine. Some schools don’t hire pimps to set up whorehouses in their dormitories, and some do. Some schools don’t steal their students’ education, and some do. It’s all part of the rich texture which makes up the tapestry of American university education.
(Haredi or halfback, you can now go to court and sue a school, a state, or the NCAA for having been deprived of an education.)
Bravo, Theresa Hayden. She teaches Human Trafficking at the U of Smell, and since a form of HT is happening right under her nose (one of many smells emanating from the U of Smell), she has decided to add to her syllabus the book chronicling the provision of women for campus basketball players and recruits and the recruits’ fathers in the players’ now-notorious dorm.
The book’s co-author is the madam who, in association with an assistant basketball coach no longer (ahem) at UL, coordinated the buying and selling.
Because it’s a required class text, Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen does not appear as one slender singular upright copy among many other texts in the store; multiple copies loll sideways in the course stacks, making a striking statement…
From lemons Hayden has made intellectual lemonade; within a culture of smutty conspiratorial silence (similar to the silence that hushed up Peyton Manning‘s university past and the more recent rapes at Baylor University) she has taken a principled stand that will help her students absorb with dispassion the enormity of what the president of their university has allowed the institution to become. She has done what professors do.
Absent proof of “willful misconduct” by Pitino, forcing him out could leave U of L on the hook for the balance of a contract that runs through the 2025-26 season at a cost of roughly $50 million…
Having accumulated enough wealth to market two Florida homes for a combined asking price exceeding $30 million, [Pitino] can probably afford to negotiate an exit package without hardball haggling…
… you’d hit the bottle too.
*******************************
[Darrell] Griffith’s boss, Dr. David Dunn, the executive vice president for health sciences and U of L’s top doctor, was placed on leave earlier this month pending the outcome of an FBI and campus investigation into whether he misused university funds.
LOUISVILLE U
folks you’ve heard of scandalous schools
history is full of scandalous schools
but you ain’t heard nothing til
you’ve heard about louisville
it’s a place that’s crawling with thieves
has a board that trustees try to leave
till you’ve seen dorm rooms rockin’ with whores
you ain’t even darkened their doors
they call the campus louisville u
what a fucked up campus can do!
it’s the lowest graduatingest, med school on probationest
school the world ever knew
the ed school dean’s in the pen
med’care fraud hits again
pitino petrino mcgee
sexy sexy whooooeeeeee!
they keep their audits on the down low
about their bank accounts nobody knows
secret foundations funnel the cash
the u of lou has made itself absolute hash
lots of low-lifes among their teams’ lads
and even the president’s paid to be bad
so here’s my warning to you
keep away from louisville u
…and has that ever paid off. Scenes from their most recent game.
There was booing …from the sparse crowd even before the first quarter ended, and the stands – where some fights broke out – were largely empty by the midpoint of the third quarter.
Miami, playing in an empty stadium, was held to 146 total yards and just six first downs. The 58-point loss was the worst in Miami’s history, surpassing a 70-14 loss to Texas A&M in 1944.
UM’s athletic director, surveying this empty stadium, blithely reminded everyone to “make sure we continue to support our team.”
******************
Yeah, it’s all gonna be okay. Maybe we’ll get a new coach.
******************
Miami’s AD doesn’t understand that if you want people to go to your games, you shouldn’t make them puke forever.
[Rick] Pitino still has a job because he’s one of the best coaches in college basketball history. Bobby Petrino was hired — actually, re-hired — because his brilliant football mind takes precedence over an extensive list of despicable acts away from the field, capped off by that Evel Knievel impression with his mistress along for the ride.
Throughout his tenure as president, [University of Louisville president James] Ramsey has deferred to [vp for athletics Tom] Jurich in all athletics matters. He supported Jurich’s decision to keep Pitino, without punishment, after the Karen Sypher scandal. He supported Jurich’s decision to give football coach Bobby Petrino another chance despite the sex scandal that got him fired at Arkansas. He supported Jurich’s decision to keep football recruiter Clint Hurtt even after he was tainted by his involvement in the recruiting sex scandal at Miami… Already national commentators have lumped together all of Jurich’s controversial personnel decisions and concluded that UofL is guilty of condoning sexual misconduct for the sake of winning.
Talk about rushing to conclusions! Does that seem to you the record of a university that condones sexual misconduct for the sake of winning? Whoa, Nellie!
*******************
But look. Louisville’s is not the record of a university at all, is it? The opinion writer I quote above argues that universities are about this and universities are about that and the University of Louisville has to toss out all its pimps and whores and remember it’s a university yadda yadda.
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this picture. Think about Donald Trump’s huge success so far in the presidential campaign. The more Trump behaves in a way diametrically opposed to presidential, the more votes he gets. Because a lot of Americans loathe government and love people committed to trashing it.
In the same way, a lot of people loathe academic institutions and love people committed to trashing them. Bring in squads of scummy coaches to run your school, give them complete freedom and the highest salaries in the state, and they will of course run your university into the ground.
To the cheers of thousands of onlookers.
***************************
Where’s UL’s faculty? Have you heard a peep out of any of them?
***************************
The University of Louisville has a permanent hard-on. It’s difficult to think when you’re like that.
But that’s the whole point.
Whew! Finally a credible voice has come out to deny claims that the UL basketball program hired prostitutes to capture recruits. A former player sets the record straight:
Rick Pitino… don’t need to buy any kid pussy to get him to commit to the University of Louisville.
He writes:
“Football makes a profit,” some claim. To that I would say, so what? Universities could make a profit running a casino too – should they do that?
*********************
Let’s change this to:
“Football makes a profit,” some claim. To that I would say, so what? Universities could make a profit running a brothel too – should they do that?
“On the surface, it appears Louisville just skipped a sexy hostess program and went straight to the professionals,” [Armen Keteyian] wrote. “And given the high-stakes world of college basketball recruiting – and I’m not trying to be glib about this – it makes sense. This is like Hostess 5.0.“
Is this parody of a university actually parodying a parody? Are they aware of Dana Carvey’s famous wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture parody of George Herbert Walker Bush? Having been forced by a lawsuit to release the most recent auditor’s report of their crime-ridden money pit, UL says this:
Settling the lawsuit at this juncture is the prudent course of action for the University.
Much as UD would love it if university spokesperson Mark Hebert turned out to be doing a conscious parody of a parody, she figures he’s simply unaware that the hilarious formulation he’s chosen with which to cover his school’s ass has already been made notorious.
*******************
How do you leach millions from a university?
Gotta get you a bank account.
As part of its examination, [the auditor] tried to determine how many bank accounts existed in the name of University of Louisville, University of Louisville Physicians or any derivative. The firm requested information from all banks in a 50-mile radius. The university provided a list of 11 authorized accounts at PNC Bank, as well as one account in the name of the University of Louisville Athletic Association.
The firm ultimately found more than 20 additional bank accounts linked in some manner to U of L. They include accounts for the German Club, the U of L Sports Administration Club, U of L Parking, and more.
[The firm] also learned of several accounts linked to University Medical Associates, the previous incarnation of University of Louisville Physicians. However, Fifth Third Bank told [auditors] that they were unaware of any accounts in the name of the university.
The auditing firm later found additional accounts linked to previous entities tied to University of Louisville Physicians, according to the report.
Andrew Wolfson, The Courier-Journal:
Under her watch, …university employees have stole[n], misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.
[Provost Shirley] Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.
She also was forced to apologize to faculty in 2008 for failing to act against [Robert] Felner, the education dean, despite more than 30 grievances and complaints that he had intimidated, harassed, humiliated and retaliated against faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Willihnganz said at the time that she tended to dismiss the early complaints against Felner — including a no-confidence vote by faculty — because he was a “high performer” and because the complaints came from professors and staff “entrenched in their ways and resistant to change.”
She later told faculty at a meeting that she was sorry. “Mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that,” she said.
Felner was sentenced in 2010 to 63 months in federal prison for taking $2.3 million from U of L and the University of Rhode Island.
Ave atque vale!
… she didn’t know exactly what big ol’ scandal they were up to now… But their recent hiring of the University of North Carolina’s finest stonewaller, Leslie Strohm, turns out to have something to do with their attempting to keep the results of an audit of the “KFC YUM!” arena (UD is not making this stuff up) out of the hands of the state attorney general.
He has explained to the university that it’s in violation of open records laws, but the university (which no doubt has excellent reasons to stonewall on this) continues to withhold the document. And who better to help them do this than the pride of Chapel Hill, Stonewall Strohm herself?
A sample of local press coverage.
That’s called earning the “U of Smell” nickname. This hiring stinks.
And so now here, with the University under fire for not turning over documents related to an internal audit of potential misdoing (on a number of issues, including The Yum Center), the school has hired someone who is alleged to be adept at covering up wrongdoing.