Louisville’s basketball championship is vacated over sex scandal
The NCAA on Tuesday upheld penalties against Louisville’s men’s basketball program related to a sex scandal involving players, recruits and prostitutes, and ordered the university to forfeit dozens of victories, including its 2013 national championship.
It is the first time the NCAA has stripped a program of the championship won in the Division I men’s basketball tournament, the organization’s signature event.
The decision is merely the latest blow for the scandal-battered Louisville basketball program and its former coach, Rick Pitino, who was forced out in September in an unrelated recruiting scandal.
Among other punishments confirmed Tuesday, including financial ones: Louisville must vacate 123 wins — every game it won from the 2011-12 through the 2014-15 seasons — and several NCAA tournament appearances, including its 2012 and 2013 trips to the Final Four and the 2013 national championship.
“Because the student-athletes received improper benefits,” a four-person appellate panel said in a legalistic decision, “it follows they competed while ineligible, which in turn supports the vacation of records and financial penalties imposed by the Committee on Infractions.”
Louisville officials called the decision wrong.
“I cannot say this strongly enough: We believe the NCAA is simply wrong,” Greg Postel, Louisville’s interim president, said in a statement.
The scandal under examination by the NCAA appellate panel first came to light in 2015. A woman said that Andre McGee, a former Louisville player then serving on the basketball staff, had solicited her escort service. For several years, prospects and recruits were entertained in an on-campus dormitory named for Pitino’s deceased brother-in-law.
Pitino denied all knowledge of these activities. Last year, the Committee on Infractions did not disagree but still found that he had failed to monitor his staff for compliance in alignment with NCAA rules, necessitating several penalties, including a five-game suspension of Pitino.
