LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- An open letter, on the eve of Louisville's NCAA hearing.
TO: NCAA, NCAA Complex Case Unit, Independent Accountability Resolution Panel
WHERE: Secret Underground Lair, Los Angeles, California
RE: University of Louisville secret hearing
On the eve of the opening of this weekend's NCAA Independent Accountability Resolution Process hearing of allegations against the University of Louisville that were first brought four years, eight months and 21 days ago, a few thoughts.
We all know what happened. Adidas tried to pay Brian Bowen (or his family) money to attend the University of Louisville, play basketball and then to sign with adidas upon turning professional. We’re clear on that. It happened. The FBI investigation is over, as are the federal court cases.
We’re less clear on some of the details. But given the back-and-forth in filings, you (the NCAA) are reasonably certain that then-Louisville-assistant coach Kenny Johnson was involved as well then-Louisville-assistant Jordan Fair. You have text messages and some bank records of Johnson’s that look fishy. You have Fair on an FBI audio tape in a meeting discussing a plan.
Interestingly, despite the reach and investigative powers of the FBI, it never really got anything on then-Louisville-head-coach Rick Pitino, despite him being the guy they really wanted, apparently. So you, in turn, don’t really have the kind of proof that would enable you to make a case against him court, though with a lower standard, you’ve made a case against him anyway.
Regardless, Louisville is going to argue some aspects of this, but it’s a bit ridiculous. It’s the old college try, as they say. Rules were broken. And Louisville was on probation, it’s true.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen in that hearing in Los Angeles. If that’s where it is. If there even really is a hearing. This is all taking place in secret, so of course, it’s all legit. (Pausing to roll eyes).
It should be taking place in public. It should be taking place without all the cloak-and-dagger. But it’s your show.
I’d just be interested in knowing, at this point, what justice looks like? How is it handed out?
We are 1,724 days past the original allegation. The University of Louisville is on its third president since that day. It is on its third athletics director. It is on its fifth basketball coach – if you count the two acting coaches.
In all that time, it has been to one NCAA Tournament. It has not won a single NCAA Tournament game. It has won only two conference tournament games.
Louisville fired a Hall of Fame basketball coach. It parted ways with an athletics director who helped remake its campus and who led it from Conference USA to the ACC.
And my question, nearly 57 months after the allegations first were announced, is who exactly are you going to punish?
Incidentally, that amount of time, in a college environment, is an eternity. The National Center for Education Statistics indicates it takes an average of 52 months to complete a bachelor's degree program from first enrollment to degree completion.
This process has, literally, taken the college athletics equivalent of an entire generation just to come to a hearing. And at Louisville, which took more radical steps than any university in this entire process to change its personnel and culture in its wake, the college basketball and athletics leadership is now at least two administrations removed, and sometimes more.
Which brings me back to the question, on whose head will this hammer fall?
Head coach Kenny Payne, who was at Kentucky when these events took place? Athletics director Josh Heird, who was at Villanova? Louisville’s current players, who were in high school? Louisville interim president Lori Gonzalez, who was in Memphis as vice chancellor for academic, faculty and student affairs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center there.
On "the institution?" Institutions act based upon their leadership. And there is no one in the leadership left at Louisville with ties to these events. Still, I know that’s how the NCAA has regularly done business in the past, so let’s consider the subject of justice.
Not a single player involved in this scandal ever played a minute of basketball for Louisville. Not a single senior administrator who could have been involved in such a scheme – if the university had ever even been determined complicit with the scheme, which it has not – remains. Not a single link to those events exists, except for the university’s association with Adidas itself.
Has the NCAA moved to sanction adidas for its role in all this? Has the NCAA had any interaction with the apparel company that began all of this mess in the first place?
Louisville did not derive any advantage from this scheme (though it certainly was an attempt to gain Louisville an advantage) and in fact has willingly and deliberately set its basketball program back in reaction to its part in it. No school in the nation dealt with its program more swiftly or severely in the wake of these allegations. No, it didn't pull the plug on men's basketball. It didn't sentence the program to death. But it sure dismembered it, and the effects are still being felt.
By contrast, another program involved in this same scandal — whose coach was far more complicit judging from text message evidence — just won the NCAA championship last April. You probably remember. You guys gave them the trophy.
If I were Louisville, I would simply convene my defense and then be silent. And we’d all just sit there, one minute for every day that this whole ridiculous process has taken.
Assuming you spend eight hours in session for these hearing days, you’d be sitting there in silence for 3 ½ days.
It would give everyone time to think about what exactly is the right thing to do here, about what exactly justice looks like in this situation. (In addition, there are some minor allegations against another Louisville coach, Chris Mack, included with the more serious charges. How these were allowed to be appended to those charges, I don't understand. It's like tacking a speeding ticket, years after the fact, onto a murder charge. It's so ridiculous as to be insulting. But here it is.)
The university will have operated under this self-imposed cloud for nearly 5 years before this is all said and done. It has relegated one of its more visible institutions, men’s basketball, to also-ran status.
That time served is punishment enough. Adding to it would hurt only the innocent.
The NCAA has excelled in doing just that for decades. But with Name, Image and Likeness compensation now the law of the land, isn’t it time for the NCAA and its various enforcement bodies to think about what justice actually looks like?
In this case, the process has been the penalty. Fair enough.
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