Louisville Basketball Former Coaches Avoid Bigger Sanctions

Louisville Basketball, Former Coaches Avoid Bigger Sanctions

An independent panel has put Louisville’s men’s basketball on two years’ probation and fined the program $5,000, but spared the school — and former coaches Rick Pitino and Chris Mack — from serious penalties from NCAA allegations that the were charged after a federal investigation into corruption in college basketball.

The Independent Resolution Panel (IRP) announced Thursday that Louisville avoided a postseason ban and other significant sanctions in the violation case linked to the FBI’s 2017 investigation into corruption related to college basketball and the school’s relationship to former star recruit Brian Bowen Jr. began.

Louisville was also given a two-week ban on unofficial visits and a public reprimand and censure. The panel concluded that the NCAA could not provide “evidence” that Adidas, which is cited as the organizer of a plan to direct recruits to its partner schools, was “an agent” of the university.

Former Louisville assistants Kenny Johnson and Jordan Fair, who had been accused by the NCAA of arranging payments to Bowen’s family and another recruit’s family and giving the NCAA false information about their relationships with recruits, were both given two years on the show -Cause penalties by the Panel for Level I violations.

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Those penalties will limit their collective ability to work in college basketball during this time, although Johnson’s show cause specifically involves his ability to recruit at live events during those two years. Johnson is an assistant at Rhode Island on Archie Miller’s staff, while Fair has recently been training at the AAU circuit. The violations in which Fair and Johnson were not involved were Level III violations.

The decision of the panel cannot be appealed.

In 2017, the FBI claimed that Pitino and his associates worked with Adidas, the school’s apparel partner, to route payments to Bowen and another recruit. Both Pitino, now head coach at Iona, and former sporting director Tom Jurich were fired.

In the NCAA’s allegation notice, Pitino was cited for failing to foster an atmosphere of compliance. Several people linked to Adidas were charged and jailed for their role in the corruption scandal, but the panel found that neither Pitino nor Adidas were to blame.

“As a result, the hearing panel has found no additional violations for Louisville related to actions by the apparel company or its employees in this case,” the panel said in a statement. “Furthermore, the Hearings Committee found no violation by [Pitino] occurred because he has shown that he fostered an atmosphere of docility.”

David Benck, senior vice president, general counsel and assistant secretary of a retail firm, international and national arbitrator and senior panel member of the IRP, said the panel does not consider Adidas in the Louisville case to be anything more than a company marketing itself.

“Our interpretation was that it was just their own brand promotion,” Benck said at a news conference on Thursday. “Furthermore… the institution has never requested assistance with recruitment.”

That ruling could also bode well for Kansas, which is facing similar allegations of using Adidas to influence recruits in a violation case also being handled by the IRP. Kansas announced Wednesday that it had imposed a four-game ban on coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend, both named in the notice of allegations against the school.

As Louisville worked through the Bowen case, allegations of recruiting violations against Mack, who left the program last year, complicated and expanded this chapter for Louisville. After former assistant Dino Gaudio threatened to expose NCAA allegations within the Louisville program after being fired from Mack’s staff, he was charged in federal court with attempted extortion of the program. He received a fine and probation.

Louisville later self-reported several recruiting violations involving graduate managers and other employees participating in court activities and showing recruits videos with their names, pictures and likenesses.

But the IRP found that these breaches “were isolated and unintentional and provided no more than a minimal recruiting or competitive advantage and thus did not provide sufficient basis to support this.” [Mack] Breached the head coach’s responsibilities or failed to foster an atmosphere of compliance.”

The Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) was created in 2019 as an alternative for schools that wanted their cases to be heard by those outside NCAA Division I athletics. The process has been clogged with delays and complications, and the NCAA has decided to eliminate the IARP after processing its pending cases.