Rick Pitino’s light suspension highlights former Tennessee Vols A.D. Mike Hamilton’s incompetence
Louisville coach Rick Pitino’s suspension compared to Bruce Pearl with the Tennessee Volunteers shows former athletic director Mike Hamilton’s incompetence.
The scandal surrounding Rick Pitino’s suspension has Tennessee Vols fans angrier than ever about the inconsistency of the NCAA.
Pitino’s suspension stems from a prostitution scandal involving the school and his players. He got five games for that.
Meanwhile, Bruce Pearl suffered and eight-game NCAA suspension as Tennessee basketball’s head coach, was eventually fired, and then got hit by a three-year show-cause penalty. Why? Because he hosted a recruit at his house for a barbecue that had nearly 100 other people and then lied to the NCAA about it.
Major sports analysts like Clay Travis have rightly pointed out how ridiculous it is that lying about a barbecue could warrant a worse punishment than a prostitution scandal.
But Vols fans angry about the inconsistency are missing the point. Sure, Rick Pitino wasn’t 100 percent convicted of lying the way Pearl was about the barbecue. And yes, as Rick Pitino, he’s a more legendary figure than Pearl.
The real reason for the inconsistency, though, is the administration.
Pitino’s athletic department is much more competent than the Vols’ was back in 2010.
Mike Hamilton handled everything about the Pearl situation wrong. Hamilton’s idiotic hires in Derek Dooley and Lane Kiffin are still his worst moves. But he did not fight the Pearl case as he should have.
Remember, he stuck by Pearl at first. And then when he realized that the NCAA could come down hard on the program, he jumped ship and fired him. But that wasn’t before the start of the NCAA Tournament in 2011 when he went on a radio show and hinted Pearl’s job was in jeopardy to distract the team even further.
Why not fight for a lesser punishment and use your power as an A.D. at one of the most powerful athletic institutions in the country? Well, Hamilton was always conventional. And it cost him in the end.
Contrast that with Tom Jurich, Louisville’s athletic director. He’s the one who hired Rick Pitino. He also hired Bobby Petrino…twice. In the middle of that he hired Charlie Strong to kick the football program into high gear.
And even before Petrino the first time, he hired John L. Smith to turn Louisville football back into a winner.
Jurich is single-handedly responsible for restoring both programs to major national prominence. Nobody will mistake him for a weak athletic director.
Do you not think his involvement in this scandal lessened Pitino’s punishment? Of course it did!
Jurich, unlike Hamilton, is confident and doesn’t cave to the public for decisions. He had no problem hiring Petrino back after Petrino’s scandal-ridden career. And he stuck by Pitino during an extortion attempt against him.
Why? Because he understands that winning is the best thing for a university.
Meanwhile, Hamilton tried to strut his authority early in Knoxville after getting respect for hiring Bruce Pearl. Then he began to cave to public demand and just went with the flow.
As a result, unlike Jurich, you knew that Hamilton would not go out of his way to fight for Pearl. And the NCAA responded by unfairly railroading the best coach in Tennessee basketball history.