For this week's Blog I I want you to read the article below about the Louisville basketball scandal that is rocking the NCAA. I think it is important to keep up with current issues related to basketball, especially as March Madness gets closer. Rick Pitino has been one of my favorite coaches because he always seems to be able to get the most out of his players. However, the allegations against him and the Men's Basketball program will greatly impact his program this year and for years to come. Please read the article below and answer the questions at the bottom the article. Please remember to put your name on the Blog.
'Continuum' of Sexism in Sports
Recruits visiting the University of Louisville were allegedly entertained by nude dancers and prostitutes paid for by a program assistant. How culpable is head coach Rick Pitino, and is the case a symptom of a larger problem in college sports?
October 26, 2015
First it was the claim of one prostitute, but now a scandal at the University of Louisville has grown. For years, Louisville basketball recruits attended parties at a campus residence hall that included nude dancers and paid sex, former and prospective players told ESPN, lending credence to claims made by a former prostitute in a book published this month.
The former escort, Katina Powell, said she was paid by Andre McGee, the team's former graduate assistant and director of basketball operations, to provide recruits with strip shows and sex during campus visits. Powell said she was given about $10,000 by McGee for supplying dancers -- including her own teenage daughters -- for more than two dozen parties during a four-year period. In one instance, McGee allegedly offered the escort a bottle of whiskey signed by the team's head coach, Rick Pitino, as payment.
On Friday, McGee resigned from his position as an assistant basketball coach at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where he moved before the scandal broke. “The university deserves a full-time assistant coach and I am not able to provide that to the basketball team while the false allegations against me are being investigated,” McGee stated.
But some Louisville faculty members and other critics aren’t satisfied with McGee’s resignation, saying that Pitino is also culpable and that blame can ultimately be laid at the feet of big-time college sports as a whole. In the arms race that is Division I intercollegiate athletics, they say, some colleges are all too comfortable using attractive young women as a recruiting tool, and powerful coaches can count on underlings to handle the logistics.
“If Pitino didn’t have knowledge about this sort of thing, then he should not be a coach at all,” Nancy Theriot, a professor and chair of women’s and gender studies at Louisville, said. “If he did have knowledge, then he shouldn’t resign. He should be fired.”
While the case is being investigated by both the university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Louisville officials are adamant that the university has no plans to fire Pitino, who denies knowing about the parties. The veteran Hall of Fame coach said last week that he’s not quitting.
“I will not resign and let you down,” Pitino wrote in a blog post. “Someday I will walk away in celebration of many memorable years, but that time is not now. I do not fight these accusations by others, but rather turn the other cheek. Couldn’t do it at 33, but at 63 it’s the wise thing to do. Let’s let the investigators do their job and we will play basketball.”
In the post, he also referenced Pope Francis’s recent visit to the United States, saying the pope would frequently answer controversial questions with the phrase “we will let God judge.” It’s advice Pitino said Louisville students and fans should remember as the investigation continues. “Let’s not try to justify,” he wrote, “but let the Lord judge.”
Pitino will also be judged, however, by a considerably less celestial entity: the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
Louisville alerted the association about the possible recruiting violations (providing impermissible “extra benefits” to prospects) a month before Powell’s book was published, but it could be months before an investigation is complete. Even if Pitino was unaware of the alleged sex parties, he would likely still be found to have violated NCAA rules. Recent NCAA decisions about recruiting and academic violations at Syracuse University and Southern Methodist University have placed sanctions on head coaches despite finding no evidence that the coaches knew about the misconduct.
That’s because the NCAA revised its rules last year to hold coaches more accountable for all violations within their programs.
“An institution's head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach,” the revised rule states. “An institution's head coach shall promote an atmosphere of compliance within his or her program and shall monitor the activities of all institutional staff members involved with the program who report, directly or indirectly, to the coach.”
Pitino’s contract -- which runs through 2026 -- contains similar language. The coach is required to “diligently supervise compliance of assistant coaches and any other employees for which [he] is administratively responsible.” The dormitory in which the parties took place was also under Pitino’s purview. The building is designated for athletes and was built at his request.
“You build a basketball dorm because you want more control, not less control,” sports columnist Rick Bozich wrote. “You build a basketball dorm because you want more information about what is going on with your players, not less information. You build a basketball dorm to make certain that scandals like this scandal do not turn your program into a national punch line. You control the security there. You control who comes and goes. You control everything because coaches like Pitino insist upon control.”
As tawdry and sensational as the Louisville case may seem, it is not the first time a program has been accused of using sex to attract athletes to a university.
In 2013, Sports Illustrated reported that Oklahoma State University’s football program used a group of women to entice recruits. Officially, the group, called Orange Pride, was meant to show visiting high school athletes around campus. Unofficially, according to Sports Illustrated, some of the women were having sex with the players. “There's no other way a female can convince you to come play football at a school besides sex,” one former OSU football player said. “The idea was to get [recruits] to think that if they came to Oklahoma State, it was gonna be like that all the time.”
The NCAA ruled that the allegations were "unfounded" but found the university in violation of "engaging in impermissible hosting activities" for using Orange Pride in recruiting activities. Such recruitment groups, or hostess programs, are not uncommon, despite the NCAA having banned “gender-based student hosting groups.” Louisville has used such programs in the past, too. Sex isn’t always part of the job description -- especially not formally -- but it does happen, and sometimes it happens without consent.
In 2007, the University of Colorado at Boulder reached a settlement with two women who said they were gang-raped at a party for recruits. The alleged assaults stemmed from a larger recruiting scandal that included strippers hired to entertain recruits and allegations that hostesses were being paid to sleep with the athletes.
Scandals involving hostess programs have also hit Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University.
To be clear, Theriot, the chair of Louisville’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, said, using recruiting hostesses is not the same thing as paying for prostitutes to have sex with players. But the two “do exist on a continuum,” she said. They’re both part of a larger pattern of behavior where women are offered up as eye candy or more in an attempt to entice male athletes to join a team.
“With this sort of case, where staff members are paying for sex, it puts an extreme spotlight on what I think is actually a very widespread problem,” Theriot said. “And that is this sexist situation on campus where men are recruiting other men to play sports by providing them with girls.”
1. Name 3 other university's that have been involved in recruiting scandals besides Louisville.
2. Does Rick Pitino plan on resigning?
3. Do you think Rick Pitino should be penalized for these violations if he didn't know anything about them? Why or why not?
4. Do you think this goes on at other top-notch universities? Why or why not?
The former escort, Katina Powell, said she was paid by Andre McGee, the team's former graduate assistant and director of basketball operations, to provide recruits with strip shows and sex during campus visits. Powell said she was given about $10,000 by McGee for supplying dancers -- including her own teenage daughters -- for more than two dozen parties during a four-year period. In one instance, McGee allegedly offered the escort a bottle of whiskey signed by the team's head coach, Rick Pitino, as payment.
On Friday, McGee resigned from his position as an assistant basketball coach at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where he moved before the scandal broke. “The university deserves a full-time assistant coach and I am not able to provide that to the basketball team while the false allegations against me are being investigated,” McGee stated.
But some Louisville faculty members and other critics aren’t satisfied with McGee’s resignation, saying that Pitino is also culpable and that blame can ultimately be laid at the feet of big-time college sports as a whole. In the arms race that is Division I intercollegiate athletics, they say, some colleges are all too comfortable using attractive young women as a recruiting tool, and powerful coaches can count on underlings to handle the logistics.
“If Pitino didn’t have knowledge about this sort of thing, then he should not be a coach at all,” Nancy Theriot, a professor and chair of women’s and gender studies at Louisville, said. “If he did have knowledge, then he shouldn’t resign. He should be fired.”
While the case is being investigated by both the university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Louisville officials are adamant that the university has no plans to fire Pitino, who denies knowing about the parties. The veteran Hall of Fame coach said last week that he’s not quitting.
“I will not resign and let you down,” Pitino wrote in a blog post. “Someday I will walk away in celebration of many memorable years, but that time is not now. I do not fight these accusations by others, but rather turn the other cheek. Couldn’t do it at 33, but at 63 it’s the wise thing to do. Let’s let the investigators do their job and we will play basketball.”
In the post, he also referenced Pope Francis’s recent visit to the United States, saying the pope would frequently answer controversial questions with the phrase “we will let God judge.” It’s advice Pitino said Louisville students and fans should remember as the investigation continues. “Let’s not try to justify,” he wrote, “but let the Lord judge.”
Pitino will also be judged, however, by a considerably less celestial entity: the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
Louisville alerted the association about the possible recruiting violations (providing impermissible “extra benefits” to prospects) a month before Powell’s book was published, but it could be months before an investigation is complete. Even if Pitino was unaware of the alleged sex parties, he would likely still be found to have violated NCAA rules. Recent NCAA decisions about recruiting and academic violations at Syracuse University and Southern Methodist University have placed sanctions on head coaches despite finding no evidence that the coaches knew about the misconduct.
That’s because the NCAA revised its rules last year to hold coaches more accountable for all violations within their programs.
“An institution's head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach,” the revised rule states. “An institution's head coach shall promote an atmosphere of compliance within his or her program and shall monitor the activities of all institutional staff members involved with the program who report, directly or indirectly, to the coach.”
Pitino’s contract -- which runs through 2026 -- contains similar language. The coach is required to “diligently supervise compliance of assistant coaches and any other employees for which [he] is administratively responsible.” The dormitory in which the parties took place was also under Pitino’s purview. The building is designated for athletes and was built at his request.
“You build a basketball dorm because you want more control, not less control,” sports columnist Rick Bozich wrote. “You build a basketball dorm because you want more information about what is going on with your players, not less information. You build a basketball dorm to make certain that scandals like this scandal do not turn your program into a national punch line. You control the security there. You control who comes and goes. You control everything because coaches like Pitino insist upon control.”
As tawdry and sensational as the Louisville case may seem, it is not the first time a program has been accused of using sex to attract athletes to a university.
In 2013, Sports Illustrated reported that Oklahoma State University’s football program used a group of women to entice recruits. Officially, the group, called Orange Pride, was meant to show visiting high school athletes around campus. Unofficially, according to Sports Illustrated, some of the women were having sex with the players. “There's no other way a female can convince you to come play football at a school besides sex,” one former OSU football player said. “The idea was to get [recruits] to think that if they came to Oklahoma State, it was gonna be like that all the time.”
The NCAA ruled that the allegations were "unfounded" but found the university in violation of "engaging in impermissible hosting activities" for using Orange Pride in recruiting activities. Such recruitment groups, or hostess programs, are not uncommon, despite the NCAA having banned “gender-based student hosting groups.” Louisville has used such programs in the past, too. Sex isn’t always part of the job description -- especially not formally -- but it does happen, and sometimes it happens without consent.
In 2007, the University of Colorado at Boulder reached a settlement with two women who said they were gang-raped at a party for recruits. The alleged assaults stemmed from a larger recruiting scandal that included strippers hired to entertain recruits and allegations that hostesses were being paid to sleep with the athletes.
Scandals involving hostess programs have also hit Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University.
To be clear, Theriot, the chair of Louisville’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, said, using recruiting hostesses is not the same thing as paying for prostitutes to have sex with players. But the two “do exist on a continuum,” she said. They’re both part of a larger pattern of behavior where women are offered up as eye candy or more in an attempt to entice male athletes to join a team.
“With this sort of case, where staff members are paying for sex, it puts an extreme spotlight on what I think is actually a very widespread problem,” Theriot said. “And that is this sexist situation on campus where men are recruiting other men to play sports by providing them with girls.”
1. Name 3 other university's that have been involved in recruiting scandals besides Louisville.
2. Does Rick Pitino plan on resigning?
3. Do you think Rick Pitino should be penalized for these violations if he didn't know anything about them? Why or why not?
4. Do you think this goes on at other top-notch universities? Why or why not?
12 comments:
1.Syracuse, Southern Methodist, and Oklahoma State
2.No
3.yes, because he should have known what is going on with his players and staff
4.yes, this probably goes on at other universities because they use it as a means to recruit players.
Quinn Gale Period 1
1. Syracuse University, Southern Methodist University, and Oklahoma State University.
2. Rick Pitino does not plan on resigning.
3. He should be penalized for these violation even if he didn't know anything about them because ultimately, he is the head coach and he should oversee all that happens in his program. If he didn't know, then it goes to show his lack of control and oversight.
4. Given that just a handful of universities were named in this article, this, or something similar to it, probably does go on at other universities. Many universities have many excellent sports programs that it is probably difficult to choose from. So if the schools become desperate enough for recruits, they probably think that they have to do whatever possible to recruit.
Michael Tran
Nayeer Ullah
1. Name 3 other university's that have been involved in recruiting scandals besides Louisville.
Ohio State University, University of Colorado Boulder, and Syracuse
2. Does Rick Pitino plan on resigning?
Nope.
3. Do you think Rick Pitino should be penalized for these violations if he didn't know anything about them? Why or why not?
He should be penalized for the violations. They can't make a judgement based off of his denial of the events. Regardless of how his team behaves, he is the face of the school, and all leaders need to be accountable for their players and members.
4. Do you think this goes on at other top-notch universities? Why or why not?
Yes it does go on at other schools, Probably to encourage more 5 star players to join their athletic programs.
1. Arizona state, university of Oregon, and university of Tennessee
2.no
3.yes and no because a coach should always be accountable and know what their players are doing and no because he didn't know
4. YES because i feel that the best recruits always go to the "best girl schools"
Kiana Johnson
1. Syracuse, South Methodist University, Oklahoma state
2. No
3. He should not be penalized for something he didnt do or know about but from now on he should look more closely into what goes on. The other guy should fired and charged with trafficking or whatever. Coaching is his job description... Not pimping.
4.Yes, allegations have already risen among other other schools, stuff like this does happen, people arent perfect, its just a matter of time before other schools get exposed.
MUNEEB MIRZA I AM THE FIRST THIS TIME
1. syracuse smu and oklahoma state
2. no
3. no, pitino says he didn't know, so how could he have stopped it. But if he did know he should be punnished.
4. I think it does go on at other schools because women are an easy way to recuit men
Arizona state. Oregon. Tennessee
No
Yes because it is his team and his players and he has to take care of them and something like this cannot go unnoticed. I think the fact that he did not know what was going on is why he should be penalized.
Yes I'm sure this does go on at other colleges but in different ways and forms. The colleges do what they feel they have to to appeal to the athlete.
Ryan Warshaw
Period 1
Phillip garrett
1.arizona state, Tennessee , Oregon
2.no, he just wants to turn the other cheek and let the investigates do their job
3.yes unfortunately because as head coach you have to take the blame for your team. Also it is your responsibility to not let things like this happen
4.yes because other colleges want to have winning programs, and it has happened before in the past
Jon Zenelaj
1. University of Missouri, Colorado, and Arizona State
2. No he does not seem like he is going to resign.
3. Unless there is evidence that he does know of these scandals, I think he should not be penalized since there is a chance he is a innocent man and honestly did not know of these scandals going on.
4. I do not believe events such as these in the article go on in other top-notch universities. As said, the head coach did not know about this scandal and he holds a high position. This seems like an event that other universities would not do on purpose, if at all.
Chinguun Erdenesuren
1. University of Colorado, Oklahoma state university, Arizona state university
2. He will not resign
3. Yes because it is his team that is involved in the scandal therefore he is responsible for any scandal involving them
4. Probably because NCAA teams are willing to do a lot to recruit the best players they can find.
1. Colorado, Tennessee, OSU
2. No
3. Ya cause it's his team, he responsible
4. Ya cuz ballas like women
Kevin
1. Syracuse, Southern Methodist and Oklahoma State.
2. Rick Pinto did not resign.
3. He should be penalized because they can't judge based off of his denial of the event.
4. Yes because it an girl school.
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