There is no joy in seeing Rick Pitino grovel before the cameras over a momentary sexual indiscretion six years ago, even if he is a little too glib, a little too polished and a little too sanctimonious.
Pitino undoubtedly thinks an awful lot of himself. He has written several books that would indicate he has figured it all out. He penned “Success is a Choice,” followed by “Lead to Succeed” and “Rebound Rules: The Art of Success 2.0.”
It seems you, too, can have lots of success in your life if only you commit to memory what Pitino has peddled over the years.
Actually, what he is peddling is mostly himself.
He is Rick Pitino, college basketball coach extraordinaire who wears his Roman Catholicism on his expensive shirtsleeves and is paid handsomely to impart his precious wisdom to those looking to be in the presence of greatness.
As bad luck would have it, Pitino is part of the panel of motivational speakers who will appear in Freedom Hall next month.
Pitino probably is not in the motivating mood at the moment after being exposed as fallible by a woman who was not his wife.
That he is fallible should hardly come as a shock, except perhaps to those blinded by the 24/7 celebrity machine that turns mere mortals into false idols.
The glee with which Pitino is being attacked in certain quarters is understandable. If you are inclined to walk around with your head in the clouds, you should not be surprised if the masses take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing you fall.
And Pitino has fallen in a big way. In an intoxicated-fueled moment of lust, he took up with a woman in a Louisville restaurant after closing hours. She became pregnant, and then he gave her $3,000 either to have an abortion or to buy health insurance.
The latter is a distinction intended to keep with his faith, if only semantically, and assuage what has become a protracted legal affair.
Those who suggest he is a hypocrite are missing the point. Pitino did not have an ongoing affair with the woman. His was not a lifestyle. His was a poor decision made amid the haze of alcohol.
That does not grant him absolution. That recognizes the richly flawed nature of the human condition.
Most of us have self-imposed standards. And most of us, if we are honest, fail to meet those standards on occasion, whether professionally, socially or in our private lives.
That does not necessarily make anyone a hypocrite. If the definition of a hypocrite is someone who has one lapse in judgment, then we are a nation of hypocrites.
The Pitino news conference was an exercise in attempting to take control of the message.
As always, Pitino was slick. In typical fashion, he put a positive spin on this embarrassment.
“When you have a problem, if you tell the truth, your problem becomes a part of your past,” he said. “If you lie, it becomes a part of your future.”
So Pitino was telling the truth, which was a good thing.
Predictably, the university is sticking with Pitino.
You do not kick your most celebrated employee to the curb after he has built a powerhouse basketball program and is filling the school’s coffers. You do not commit what amounts to financial suicide. You do not note the morals clause in his contract, not with something that happened six years ago.
And Pitino has no inclination to resign from his lucrative position. What would be the point, anyway? He would sit out the season while providing analysis on ESPN and then get snapped up by another university in March. A resignation in that context would be trite, silly.
Besides, if infidelity is a reason to wind up in the unemployment line - either banished there or as an act of penance - ours would be a nation with a considerable unemployment problem.
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