NCAA Basketball: Will Rick Pitino coach in the 2018-19 season?

Rick Pitino is still available to be a head coach for the upcoming NCAA Basketball season. Will a team allow him to lead their program?

The FBI probe into College Basketball has already cost one high major coach his job. It will claim the coaching life of another coach before it is all sorted out. However, that one coach who is now looking for work, was not one to escape all scandal. Rick Pitino encountered what seemed like multiple controversies while Head Coach at the University of Louisville.

Coach Pitino vehemently denies any wrongdoing in any of his scandals of late. The FBI did not alone take down Pitino, yet it was a culmination of events over a year-long span. That year-long span was what appeared to be a Public relations nightmare for Louisville. Pitino was said to be involved in a scandal in which Louisville recruits were provided prostitutes while on recruiting trips. This scandal came with a self-imposed NCAA tournament ban for Louisville.

The FBI mentioned Pitino in its initial indictment and mentioned the paying of recruit Brian Bowen and his family, to sway Bowen and his decision on his recruitment. The University of Louisville almost instantly fired Pitino and the AD at the school. They has not yet released their findings on anything related to Louisville specifically, so it remains to be seen, if Pitino may have been telling the truth on this one.

Since Pitino has been unemployed he has made it known to anyone who will listen, his desire to get back into coaching. Even though he has made his desire known, his name had not actually been mentioned as a serious candidate until the Siena Saints job came open earlier this month.  Pitino once again has denied that he wanted the job, but it sounded like posturing, and he really did want the job.

Siena has elected, to most likely, go another way with either Pat Beilein or Gerry McNamara getting that job, but the fact that Pitino was mentioned meant he may have been considered to get a job so soon. Siena needed a coach who knows the area a little better than Pitino and wanted a coach they could grow with, so they went with youth over experience.

Regardless of what side of the fence, your opinion of Pitino falls. The fact remains that Pitino is still to good of an overall coach to not get a job again. While he will probably never coach again in the Power 5 ranks, a job at a meddling mid-major is for in question. This move is going to happen sooner rather than later. Especially if that program wants to win, at all possible costs.

A move like this requires the University that hires him do their fair share of due diligence. Pitino comes with a ton of baggage. If it can be proven that he truly did not know about his players and recruits hiring an escort service for parties. If the FBI report comes out and Pitino did not break any major recruiting rules, or if rules were broken how much did he know? The university that hires him is going to have to be okay with the results of these reports.

Even if the reports show that Pitino did in fact, know and was the coach who approved all of these happen under his watch. A university who has never experienced winning before may hire him for a few years to get a taste of the NCAA tournament and pick up the pieces later. It is a lot easier to pick up the pieces and deal with potential NCAA violations for a team who has never won, versus Louisville who is accustomed to winning.

Louisville, because of Pitino’s transgressions has already had to forfeit a ton of wins as well as the 2013 National Title, have skipped a tournament berth and have lost a few highly ranked recruits.  The smaller school that would hire him has most likely never experienced a tournament game and had never even received a high ranked recruit.

One of the things that the school who hires Pitino will have to worry about is, due to the impending doom coming down on Louisville. If the FBI determines Pitino was at fault he is going to be punished by the NCAA. One of the punishments could be a 10-year show cause penalty, which means he would not be able to coach in any NCAA sanctioned event or recruit for any NCAA event for 10 years. This may be the reason a school has not yet pulled the trigger on Pitino.

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If Pitino does get hit with a 10-year show cause, he will never coach again. That probably won’t happen for at least two to three years from now. Pitino is going to try to get everything he can out of his career and make some small school fan base very happy. Let’s face it, College Basketball is more fun with Pitino running a team. Everyone wants to see what he is going to do and say next.  College Basketball needs Rick Pitino, as much as Pitino loves Basketball.