Pitarresi: Rick Pitino, what were you thinking

 

Geez, Rick Pitino, what the heck were you thinking?

 

Pitino’s one-night stand with Karen Sypher six years ago, her subsequent attempts at extortion, and now his lame explanations of his behavior, especially about giving her $3,000 not for an abortion but for health insurance, just makes me itch all over.

 

I understand that we all have moments of weakness, that we all have feet of clay at one time or another, that we all are very capable of hypocrisy. Fine. But we all aren’t Rick Pitino, who, through his great success as a college coach, has made himself into a very highly respected – I hate this trendy word but it is useful here – brand. Pitino is smooth, cool, urbane, charming, street smart and book smart, able to make chicken salad out of chicken something or other. He has created a very positive image of himself as a coach and personality while maintaining his status as a devoted Catholic family man.

 

That’s shattered now. He’s still can be a great coach, but all the rest of the stuff will be looked upon as just so much baloney, and he will be viewed as a hypocrite for a long time. All because he forgot that the higher you go on the ladder the more you must be purer than Caesar’s wife –  scrupulous in your avoidance of scandal – because, boy, it’s a long trip back to earth and it ends abruptly with a lot of pain.