Pitino fired

Yahoo has an article by Pat Forde about another shakeup in college basketball:

In a stunning fall from grace, Rick Pitino has “effectively” been fired as head basketball coach at the University of Louisville, following the earlier firing of athletic director Tom Jurich, meaning the two greatest architects of Louisville’s twenty-first century athletic success are gone.
Interim University President Gregory Postel said on Wednesday that both Pitino and Jurich have been placed on “unpaid administrative leave” pending further review. But sources tell Yahoo Sports that both men interpreted their meetings today with university officials as a de facto termination and do not expect to be retained at the resolution of the situation.
Postel also stated an unnamed student athlete has been withheld from “all NCAA activity.” It’s presumed that athlete is five-star prospect Brian Bowen, who unexpectedly committed to Louisville late last spring.
Postel said he hopes to identify an interim basketball coach and athletic director within 48 hours.
Board of Trustees chairman David Grissom said the board “unanimously” supported the actions taken against Pitino and Jurich. Grissom said he went home last night and told his wife that “you can’t make this up.”
When asked why “administrative leave” and not outright dismissal, Postel said that “this is a typical way that universities deal with a situation where there is an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation is not complete and individuals at this institution have not been formally charged.” He added that the university is following its “personnel policies and the individual’s contracts.”
Pitino, the Hall of Fame basketball coach who guided the Cardinals to the 2013 national championship and two other Final Fours, has been effectively forced out after the second major scandal of the past two years enveloped his program. In June of 2017, an NCAA investigation culminated in a ruling that forced Louisville to vacate that national title as punishment for a stripper scandal funded by a staffer on behalf of players and recruits. On Tuesday, an announcement of a Dederal investigation into massive college basketball corruption ensnared Louisville basketball in a web of potential broken laws and broken NCAA rules.
Jurich, the athletic director who hired Pitino in 2001 as part of a sweeping department upgrade that ultimately earned the school membership in the prestigious Atlantic Coast Conference, was also dismissed. The twenty-year Louisville AD had backed Pitino through the previous scandal and a personal drama that implicated the coach publicly in an affair with a woman who was sentenced to prison for trying to blackmail Pitino. Jurich also further stretched the program’s ethical credibility by rehiring football coach Bobby Petrino in 2014 after a scandal cost him his job at Arkansas.
Separately, Pitino and Jurich were seen entering the university administration building Wednesday morning. Both left without comment after only a few minutes inside.
The cumulative weight of that baggage became too much for the university to bear.
The latest news revelation comes at a time of increased tension between the university board of trustees and the athletic program. In addition to the stripper scandal, trustees have been critical of athletic spending and the general oversight of Jurich, among the most critical being Papa John’s Pizza magnate John Schnatter. The school also was coerced by the city into agreeing to a new lease in July on its debt-saddled downtown basketball arena, the KFC Yum! Center. University officials were sharply criticized for the terms of the original lease, which shifted much of the financial burden to the city and left the arena in danger of defaulting on its huge loans.

Rico says he couldn't care less about basketball, but many will... (The above is a whole list of idiots who thought they were above the law.)