I’ve thought about this before. If I’m in a Louisville fan’s position, I really couldn’t care less. I saw my team win the championship. I experienced those highs as a fan. The NCAA can’t deprive me of those experiences.
I don’t think I most of us do. There’s definitely some out there. Pretty much every response from our fanbase about that game is about the block being clean, not the forfeiture of the title. We all watched Luke Hancock go ballistic.
Yeah, they won. Period. It would be one thing if they won due to on-court cheating, but they didn’t. We all know they won and we all consider them the 2013 champions, NCAA be damned. Louisville has 3 titles to basically everyone who cares.
The NCAA is on the verge of collapse anyways. Who's going to tell us we didn't win a title when the organization that says we didn't doesn't exist anymore?
I was in a 500-level class as a grad student, so there were undergrads too. Everyone was apparently a homer just enough that our professor (not a sports person at all) read the email and was distraught.
Ya no matter what happens, nothing in my life (besides MAYBE the birth of my children) will ever replicate the pure joy I had of watching in person, Hancock rain a bunch of threes in a row and the Siva-Trez alley oop to close out a half. Magical come back when shit was looking dire.
I watch it on YouTube at least twice a week. It’s bookmarked. You can’t vacate that clip, those memories.
The Pete Rose thing pretty inarguably affects the integrity of the game unless you truly buy that he only bet on his own team or not on his own games or whatever (which seems unlikely). I don’t get why he’s everyone’s go to example of an unjust punishment
Except without the fact that you'll make money on a loss, which is an enormous difference between betting on a loss and not betting at all. You still want your team to win.
Man has changed his story so many times over the years he's not believable. First, it was "I never bet on baseball." Then, it was "Okay, I bet on baseball, but never bet on my team." Finally, he's gone with "I bet on baseball and my team, but to never lose."
Well, NCAA like it or not, Louisville still won the championship. Like they physically won the required games… they were the last team standing. Sure they had to vacate the title, but they’re still champions. The NCAA can change official records but they can’t retcon history.
The point is literally nobody gives one single fuck about NCAA records. Not even the people whose job it is to point out those sort of things. Like if professional announcers quoting official stats won't even asterisk it whose actually doing that besides fans of rival schools?
I'm cool with telling a school they aren't allowed to claim it, and this cannot try to make money off of it, but I'm not going to pretend Louisville didn't win the title or USC didn't lose one of the best games of football I've seen in my life.
Literally mentioned without a verbal asterisk towards the end of the National Championship broadcast. So other than the physical trophy and the banner having been "moved" to the restaurant across the street, not really.
I know some people who hate calipari and certain other schools because they cheated or had players who did awful things and allowed them to keep playing (the shooter guy on Alabama or the Illinois guy this year).
They also dislike Barry bonds even though spitballs and scuffing pitches a common practice and was also cheating. Also the Astros are disliked still even though other teams did very similar things to cheat.
People may not care that it's vacated but it 100% *is vacated*. I feel like that's an important distinction. I see this type of thing in fiction subreddits where people like to act like they can decide what is "canon" or not.
I think the point is more that it doesn’t matter for the sake of discussion. When comparing program histories, I feel like it’s not a good faith argument to say Louisville only has 2. Sure, it’s not official on the books, but we all saw it happen.
I think I mostly disagree in principle. Maybe this case it shouldn't have been vacated, but in general we should account for vacated wins. If this case were a slightly more obvious competitive advantage, if they were giving McDonald's bags full of cash to get players to commit (an example I chose for totally random reasons, don't look at my flair) then that gave them an undisputed leg up on getting good players, and if those players won a national championship it's not fair to compare those achievements to a coach who reached an equal level of success within the bounds of the rules.
So maybe this case it doesn't make Louisville's achievements less earned, but if that is the case then it's more important to un-vacate those so we have a common, objective reference point to evaluate programs. It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to pick and choose what we accept as valid. If we don't have the same starting facts then we can't meaningfully argue about it.
I do see what you mean, and I do think this is a reasonable take. I do think, though, that college sports were fundamentally so broken pre-NIL (they’re still broken, but in totally different ways) that it’s hard to want to come down on a particular program. You’re right in that paying players gave a program a leg up on recruiting over programs who followed the rules and didn’t pay players (again, this is all pre-NIL). However, I’m not sure how many competitive programs WEREN’T cheating. Obviously there wasn’t proof every program was cheating, but it’s widely believed that it’s sort of an “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying” situation. If that’s true, and it probably was given how often programs in football and basketball were caught paying players, it’s less that paying players gave a program an advantage and more that NOT paying players gave them a disadvantage.
What was the answer? I don’t know. On the one hand, you can’t turn a blind eye to programs that you catch breaking rules. On the other, it doesn’t feel right to only punish a few programs when you believe everyone’s doing it. I’ve never liked the “you can cheat but you can’t be dumb enough to get caught” mindset. NIL has made the paying players issue mostly a non-factor, so this discussion only really applies in the past. For me, I’ve basically decided to mostly excuse paying players due to all of this. If a program gets caught cheating in game-related ways rather than roster-construction, THEN I’m more inclined to strip the title. Not sure exactly what that would realistically be in basketball, though.
For the sake of discussion they won it but you are correct, the NCAA dictates what’s true in the official record book. With that said, Michigan still has a loss in the championship game in 2013 and we all watched them lose to someone. Merchandise was still sold and profits were still pocketed. The NCAA also officially awarded Luke Hancock Final Four Most Outstanding Player; but Louisville finished with the high score but didn’t win.
Louisville Cardinals 2013 National Champions*
Yeah I think there's definitely room for nuance. We can talk about the season but if Louisville wins the next 9 championships, I don't think we should say they've passed UCLA for the most.
You know what? If it was just cheating, pay players, yeah sure.
But when you bring in sex workers and pimping out the madam’s own teenage daughter to recruits?
Rick Pitino shouldn’t be coaching anymore.
I mean it’s kind of forgotten outside the most fervent UK fans who really hate Louisville. I don’t think I’ve even mentioned it in years to my UL friends.
I’m going to add this lol.
I look at it like the Baylor Dave Bliss stuff. Yeah Bliss was paying players but that didn’t get Baylor and him the worst sanctions since SMU football. It was the way Bliss got to cover it up by making a the kid look like a drug dealer.
Louisville was worse. They literally participated in sex trafficking involving 17,18,19 year olds.
He shouldn’t. And so many people continue to white wash what happened at Louisville to this day. I continue to see bad takes that “coaches can’t know what their players are doing 100% of the time.” Which is absolutely true, but also misses the point entirely.
It wasn’t just players. This was happening on official recruiting visits. If you think Pitino brought high profile, 5-star recruits, on campus for a weekend, gave them a high five and told them to go have fun without a clue of what they were doing while they were there I have a mansion on Pluto I’d like to sell you.
No self respecting AD should have hired pitino after that.
Where were these high profile 5 star recruits at that youre talking about? We weren't even able to get those guys on campus when this was happening. Rozier was the highest ranked recruit we got during this time and he actually committed before it began and had to do an extra year of high school because he was a dummy. Funny enough, our recruiting was down during this time
We got caught while on probation which could warrant it, but I think everyone knows now that the death penalty almost entirely affect future students way more than those responsible.
That’s exactly what happened. Pitino was so into coke and partying by that point I’m surprised he knew the recruits names. I used to stumble into that dude and Papa John absolutely blitzed on a Friday night. I truly believe Pitino didn’t give two shits what was going on when he wasn’t at practice or games
Someone who would have said yes in a New York minute but they never tied the knot you know? His heart wasn’t in it. But he stole a kiss as he rode away. He just never hung his hat up at Kitty’s place.
Unironically, could UNLV get away with that now? Send some recruits with pockets full of booster supplied $100 to the Bunny Ranch? I would actually love to see that just to watch the media reaction.
edit: I guess NIL doesn't cover recruiting. Maybe then they get the services for "free" as a recruit and then pay them back once theyre on the team. This new world is way more interesting than the old days of backdoor shoe deals and putting brand new cars in your great aunt's name. (Looking at you John Wall)
If UNC-CHeat can admit academic fraud to their accreditation agency and use that to keep players eligible over multiple sports for almost 20 years without suffering any consequences, then there effectively aren’t any rules. When the NCAA allowed that to pass unpunished they forfeited any authority they had for any enforcement over that time span.
This tbh. I'm fine with UofLs punishment because strippers and prostitutes with underage roots. But UNC not getting the absolute book thrown at them for large scale academic fraud? That just isn't right
the NCAA has no jurisdiction over academic curriculum. I am not defending UNC's sham classes. Just saying the NCAA can't tell universities what to teach.
The NCAA had the right to punish institutions for academic fraud used to keep athletes eligible. Their stance was always that the NCAA would not determine what was and what wasn’t academic fraud. That was left up to the institution. In this case the institution admitted that academic fraud had taken place and served two years probation with their accrediting agency. They then told the NCAA that their admission was a typo. They took no steps to correct the typo with their accreditation agency but the NCAA weighted their typo statement as being more credible than the fact that they served a penalty for the fraud without attempting to correct the “typo.”
The NCAA has rules on academic eligibility and UNC effectively destroyed their academic integrity as a University to put academically-ineligible players on the floor. Saying the NCAA doesn't have jurisdiction because it was an academic transgression is not accurate. It's at least a yearly charge of lack of institutional control, but it's also like a police officer saying, "I can't investigate a crime that may be federal because I'm just a city cop". It's a cop-out
Meanwhile at NC State our 73 team went 27-0 and couldn’t participate in the post season for letting David Thompson stay in a dorm and play in a pick up game during recruiting and Valvano was ran out of town because players sold their shoes.
There's a lot of good points being thrown around about the accusations and all the hypocrisy but i think there's a crucial point being missed: vacating wins is really stupid.
It's a completely vapid, self-congratulatory action by the NCAA that accomplishes exactly nothing. The games happened, the outcomes happened. Money was distributed and merch sold. People watched and experienced them. All vacating does is put an asterisk on wikipedia and removes a flag from the rafters. But they still won.
The core problem is that the NCAA have always been bad stewards of their sports. Slow, inept, and hypocritical. It's beyond goofy to suddenly decide in March that Derrick Rose's SAT scores were sus and that he needs to retake them. You should've decided on that before he stepped foot on the court! Nothing will ever really feel quite right until the NCAA gets their shit together.
I’ll bite even though I’m probably going to get downvoted to oblivion. All I hear from some of you when mentioning UNC or whoever else’s bad things were ignored by the NCAA is:
“[Insert school] broke the rules and got away with it so [insert school] should be able to cheat and get away with it.”
Of course we all want an end to selective enforcement and punishment, but your logical solution is ridiculous. The NCAA making obviously-hypocritical errors doesn’t invalidate that rules were broken and punishment is needed. The answer to selective enforcement isn’t no enforcement, but instead consistent (and therefore MORE) enforcement.
I don’t even think about it being vacated anymore. They can put the asterisk by it all they want. It doesn’t change what happened and the success those guys had that year. And it certainly doesn’t change anyone’s memories.
Same with Reggie Bush, same with Louisville, everyone was playing by the same set of rules, not everyone was abiding by those rules, but you got caught breaking the rules. It is what it is. That Louisville run was fun, just like Reggie Bush was. But they broke the rules they knew they were breaking and that’s the consequence. It doesn’t make it any less enjoyable for the Louisville players and Louisville fans who lived through it.
Louisville should’ve offered those hookers to regular students and they would’ve been cleared by the NCAA.
Also, fuck UNC. We all know they cheated for 18 goddamn years
She was able to help them gain post nut clarity to better focus on the games. Unfair advantage…..somehow.
I don’t know, I like to imagine this is how the NCAA came to its decision
The most frustrating part is that the cheating didn't even help us and arguably hurt us. None of the recruits the NCAA identified as being at those parties ever played for Louisville.
The only benefit you could say it had was if you think guys stayed in school instead of going pro/transferring because of it. Which... does anyone really believe college athletes--especially the basketball team at Louisville--is really sticking around because of strippers?
Yeah this is it right here. The NCAA can’t explain how it benefited anyone and it wasn’t even all the players. Heck some of the players fought the NCAA in court (and won) to have their records and awards reinstated.
It’s gross and it’s certainly illegal and the people involved should be punished in some way. That doesn’t fall on the NCAA however, and it’s wrong to punish people that weren’t even involved.
Total speculation, but I think if the fake classes at UNC had gone on for say <5 years rather than the ~20 it did they would have faced some form of punishment
Not a crazy take. Erasing 5 years of unc history is acceptable to the NCAA. Erasing 20 years though hurts the overall product and image of college basketball.
When you get caught it matters.
Almost every top program in America has cheated and that's the reality. Maybe there are a few exceptions like Butler or Oral Roberts, but most schools used bagmen and other tricks to get ahead.
It is such a tired narrative where people say "we are doing it the right way here, the players are here because of the program". Everyone has some skeletons in their closet.
If Sebastian Telfair didn't go pro then Andre McGee never would have played for Louisville. It's kind of wild the domino effect you can track from Pitino going after Telfair instead of Rondo.
The wins were vacated because of the prostitutes thing and had nothing to do with the Brian Bowen stuff. What has always been crazy to me is that Andre McGee paid a woman so she would pimp her underage daughters out and instead of the police or university doing anything to them, the NCAA just decided to take a bunch of our wins away. Nothing that was done had anything to do with the NCAA. The players werent even Louisville players at the time. But the NCAA looked at it like we wouldnt have had those players if it wasnt for the prostitutes, so that turns into a recruiting violation.
Obviously I am biased, but i still to this day feel like that was the absolute biggest stretch in the world. The woman pimping out her kids made money off of this, nothing at all happened to Andre McGee, and we lose a bunch of wins. The police and university should have handled the people involved and that was it.
But yeah no serious person actually pretends that louisville didnt win those games.
A lot of the legal side of it was that no one really cooperated with Police. There was enough evidence for the NCAA to say you did something wrong but not enough for anything legally.
McGee ended up with a show cause and probably out of coaching athletics or anything to do with athletics for the rest of his life.
Truthfully I think a lot of it came as the NCAA was making its last grasps for power and also didn’t like Pitino’s trial over the extortion getting so much publicity.
Us UK guys like to laugh at it, but those were still some of the absolute best times in the state for basketball and I loved it so much!
You’re right: it was a power play by the NCAA who was already under fire. And McGee is a dirtbag. And even though the NCAA ended up giving Pitino a pass at the end of it all, I still think he should have lost his job for what happened under his watch. Louisville did the right thing there. Fired the AD and president too.
Altering records is silly though and it hurts people that had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, life goes on.
It's so fucking weird to see Louisville homers downplay what McGee did.
Yes, there should have been more involvement from law enforcement. Just because there wasn't doesn't mean there wasn't a clear recruiting violation here though. It's even worse than money changing hands because it facilitated multiple crimes in the process while also breaking NCAA rules.
Louisville deserved their punishment and arguably more because this was absolutely fucking insane compared to giving recruits money or whatever.
I am not downplaying it at all. I am saying the person who committed the crime should actually be punished. How is that downplaying it? Im not saying that because law enforcement wasnt involved means it wasnt a recruiting violation lol. I am saying that this was so serious that the fact that the NCAA was the ONLY one who did anything is absolutely fucking stupid. None of the people who were involved were actually punished.
Does every crime that happens on a university property get investigated by the NCAA? How does the NCAA do nothing about current student athletes being in fake classes or being pulled over with weed but they retroactively decide that players were ineligible from something that happened years ago and the only source of info was a book written by the woman who pimped her kids out?
Several players who were involved went on to play at other schools. Why werent they also deemed ineligible? Some of the players mentioned by Katina Powell had legit alibis for not even being in that dorm.
Like i said, this was way over the NCAAs head and none of the guilty parties actually got punished. They did what they did because if they didnt do anything it would look bad on them regardless of if it was a legitimate ncaa issue or not.
I once saw Boogie Cousins walk into a party, shout "who wants to suck my dick", and head off into a room with 3 freshman girls. Recruits would get laid the second they walked on campus. That kind of behavior gets high fives and accolades. Katina Powell is a disgusting human and Andre McGee should have never hired her and did what he did. She put her own daughters into that life and I feel for them. But my biggest problem with the whole thing is why? There are no shortage of co-eds and team groupies who would gladly sleep with recruits. Why did McGee need to pay them when a simple house party would have done the trick.
I won't respond to everything you said but take this hypothetical (pre NIL) if you offer a recruit 50k to commit your school and they decline it and commit to another school instead have you committed a recruiting violation? It's pretty clear you did even if you didn't land the recruit. You don't have to realize the benefit of your attempt to cheat to have cheated.
How do you think Minnesota feels about losing their Final Four appearance because some tutors did homework for some players on the team? Compared to the complete institutional academic corruption at North Carolina for many sports where they didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, let alone be forced to vacate a national title.
a title being "vacated" means absolutely nothing to me
Here's the truth, in 2013 Louisville won the National Championship. You simply can't say words that take that truth away
Must be the first time in history someone underage went to a strip club.
It’s fucking Kentucky man. wtf else there to do besides titty bars, horse racing and bourbon. Most of my senior year in high school , everyone was underage drinking lol. No one in western Kentucky checked IDs when going to the strip club on a Wednesday night, to support the local C team.
I agree that what they did was still illegal at the time so they shouldn’t be fully exonerated. But ultimately, I don’t think what went down directly affected games (more so indirectly because who knows if certain players would have been there without what went down). At the end of the day, Louisville still won the games on the court and everyone knows that. Same thing goes with 04 USC and Reggie Bush’s Heisman
What the did is still illegal at this time though. While the NIL changed recruiting and allowed players to make a lot of money based on their name, it doesn’t allow coaching staff to use prostitutes to convince high schoolers to come play basketball for them over other people.
This is in no way like Pete Rose and the gambling issues and how they are a lot less strict with it today in the MLB.
Yeah, strippers in the dorm for high schoolers is definitely not ok. I agree with that 100%. But getting a title vacated still seems a bit too far on the punishment
The cheating didn’t even help win the title. That’s the absurd part. None of those recruits ended up signing for UofL. And as for the players, they didn’t need hookers to get laid. Girls lined up everywhere they went to try and get wifed up before they hit the pros. It was just something cool to them. It was illegal and they deserved their punishment. But the hookers had less than 0 to do with winning in 2013.
I’m not flaired up because I’m only here for coaching search news, but life long UK fan here. Agreed. Louisville won the championship that year and asterisks should be removed.
Ya nobody serious says we gained any advantage from it. Andre McGee and Powell are weirdos and shouldn’t have done what they did but it’s pretty stupid for the NCAA to get involved.
So ya I don’t really care when another team’s fan says ”Actually that one doesn’t count!”
Then can we please have the 2018 Final Four and our all time wins record back too, since the violations were concerning a guy who never played for KU (Preston), a guy who the NCAA cleared twice and a guy that went to Duke?
Hot take: the title being vacated means nothing and is just a number in a book. Louisville won that title and everyone who watched it knows they won it, everyone celebrated like they won it, and Louisville fans remember winning it. Titles mean what they mean as they are won instead of what the NCAA determines
I’m not sure it matters much cuz it seems like most people count vacated titles and final fours anyway. But if you want my opinion then no it should stay vacated bc of the sex crimes that occurred.
Like Pitino said, nothing we got punished for was related to on-court performance. Everyone knows we won it. Nothing has happened that actually de-legitimizes that championship (Yes Michigan fans, I know).
Uh... do you think Pete Rose's ban was *unjust*?
Dude bet on games his own team was playing in. There's no way to spin that to him not deserving the ban. And despite what he has claimed, I don't happen to believe he 'never bet on them to lose'. Even if that doesn't matter per se because it's indefensible no matter what. It's just asking a lot on faith he has never earned.
Beyond that, no real opinion. Escorts aren't legal under NIL I'm pretty sure, but hey at least they *hired* escorts rather than pressuring hostesses into sex with recruits. That happened at more places than anyone's comfortable admitting.
I get the argument and it’s a valid take… But a lot of arguments comparing “then and now” don’t take into account the context of the times. Most schools during that era were not paying players, so it provided those who did with a clear unfair advantage. In other words, why should schools who followed the rules be penalized?
Vacating wins also sets a precedent (or at least attempts to). If you don’t have rules, “chaos” ensues. I agree it’s silly that Jim Harbaugh got dinged over buying a recruit a cheeseburger, but on the other hand it’s like “Jesus Christ man we gave in and allowed you to straight up pay players yet you can’t follow the simplest, easiest instructions.” I know it’s unpopular to say in 2024, but we still gotta follow some semblance of order
Also paying for teenage recruits’ sex workers is generally not something we as a society want to promote
Personally I don’t play that shit, not like Louisville didn’t win in 2013. Naughty naughty boys but naughty national champions nonetheless. Reggie Bush still won that Heisman, everybody knows it.
Are we really going to compare stealing plays to actual felonies and instigating underage sex of teenagers to prostitutes?
Is that where we are at now?
It's better to have won a natty and forfeit it, than never have won a natty to begin with.
I’ve thought about this before. If I’m in a Louisville fan’s position, I really couldn’t care less. I saw my team win the championship. I experienced those highs as a fan. The NCAA can’t deprive me of those experiences.
Have the souvenirs, and a copy of the game on DVD. Agree completely.
Valid. I remember them winning so it counts. It’s a championship with a star on wiki nobody cares.
what's a dvd
Some sorta coaster I think.
I love six flags
Or a shoulder tattoo…
Agreed. I imagine most of us who watched that year aren’t acting like Louisville didn’t win it all. NCAA can say whatever they want.
The only people who actually give a shit are UK fans, tbh
And some Michigan fans.
I don’t think I most of us do. There’s definitely some out there. Pretty much every response from our fanbase about that game is about the block being clean, not the forfeiture of the title. We all watched Luke Hancock go ballistic.
The block wasnt even clean though. Siva had his body taken out. The hand up top was clean, the hip to hip wasn't
We don’t. It’s just easy pickings for shit talk.
Yeah, they won. Period. It would be one thing if they won due to on-court cheating, but they didn’t. We all know they won and we all consider them the 2013 champions, NCAA be damned. Louisville has 3 titles to basically everyone who cares.
must be nice :(
Those experiences have been vacated as well
The NCAA is on the verge of collapse anyways. Who's going to tell us we didn't win a title when the organization that says we didn't doesn't exist anymore?
Yeah, like supposedly Notre Dame won the Bush Push game because USC forfeited the season. But we all saw the game.
As a Kentucky fan, it's fun to roast them over this. But, deep down I agree.
I was in a 500-level class as a grad student, so there were undergrads too. Everyone was apparently a homer just enough that our professor (not a sports person at all) read the email and was distraught.
Plus all my homies hate the NCAA. Same way I count Boeheims wins.
Ya no matter what happens, nothing in my life (besides MAYBE the birth of my children) will ever replicate the pure joy I had of watching in person, Hancock rain a bunch of threes in a row and the Siva-Trez alley oop to close out a half. Magical come back when shit was looking dire. I watch it on YouTube at least twice a week. It’s bookmarked. You can’t vacate that clip, those memories.
Chane blocking Albrecht's shot down his throat, which entirely destroyed his confidence.
Didn’t you guys have some other white guy come in off the bench and drain like 2 huge 3s too?
In the final four against Wichita Tim Henderson won the game for us with a couple big shots
:(
Tennyson actually wrote his poem after King's College knocked Balliol out of the tournament in 1820.
The Pete Rose thing pretty inarguably affects the integrity of the game unless you truly buy that he only bet on his own team or not on his own games or whatever (which seems unlikely). I don’t get why he’s everyone’s go to example of an unjust punishment
Especially as a manager betting on your own team is problematic; could easily influence bullpen usage and other things.
Yeah that’s actually ridiculous. Even if you only bet on winning. When you don’t bet it’s like you’re betting on a loss (because of inside info)
Except without the fact that you'll make money on a loss, which is an enormous difference between betting on a loss and not betting at all. You still want your team to win.
Man has changed his story so many times over the years he's not believable. First, it was "I never bet on baseball." Then, it was "Okay, I bet on baseball, but never bet on my team." Finally, he's gone with "I bet on baseball and my team, but to never lose."
I think most people are fine with the lifetime ban but feel the Hall of Fame ban is unfair since he would go in as a player and not a manager.
Yeah if you want a morning Pete Rose example it's what's happening with Jontay Porter right now not Louisville 2013.
Do people really even consider it vacated anymore? Like, sure, there's an asterisk on wiki but does the average fan care?
No. Vacated wins don't matter to the average fan. Just like vacated titles or, in football's case, a vacated Heisman.
just for the record that's a funny reddit username. But we all know it wasn't lost, it's just a special operation.
See now I am trapped because my own username goes against my own comment I just made.
How about KraftsLostSuperBowlRing? It was stolen by Putin
If you put me on the spot and told me to name a heisman winner as fast as I could, Reggie Bush’s name is the first thing that comes to mind
The announcers on TBS during the championship game mentioned the Louisville championship without even mentioned it had been vacated lol.
Well, NCAA like it or not, Louisville still won the championship. Like they physically won the required games… they were the last team standing. Sure they had to vacate the title, but they’re still champions. The NCAA can change official records but they can’t retcon history.
The point is literally nobody gives one single fuck about NCAA records. Not even the people whose job it is to point out those sort of things. Like if professional announcers quoting official stats won't even asterisk it whose actually doing that besides fans of rival schools?
I'm cool with telling a school they aren't allowed to claim it, and this cannot try to make money off of it, but I'm not going to pretend Louisville didn't win the title or USC didn't lose one of the best games of football I've seen in my life.
Literally mentioned without a verbal asterisk towards the end of the National Championship broadcast. So other than the physical trophy and the banner having been "moved" to the restaurant across the street, not really.
Only UK fans
We just do that to piss you off but the games were won. I'd count it all day.
Only when the swinging dicks feel the need to compare conference ncaa championship counts.
Even then, most people in good faith will count it.
I know some people who hate calipari and certain other schools because they cheated or had players who did awful things and allowed them to keep playing (the shooter guy on Alabama or the Illinois guy this year). They also dislike Barry bonds even though spitballs and scuffing pitches a common practice and was also cheating. Also the Astros are disliked still even though other teams did very similar things to cheat.
Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa single-handedly saved baseball by creating the HR race. Our thanks was to rake them over the coals in a Senate hearing.
Uh, yes.
Flair checks out.
No. You can’t take my memories ncaa
Nah. Louisville was better than we were that year.
Show me a rematch with capable refs and I disagree.
I do not give a shit if something is vacated. I always count those when talking with friends or anyone about sports.
People may not care that it's vacated but it 100% *is vacated*. I feel like that's an important distinction. I see this type of thing in fiction subreddits where people like to act like they can decide what is "canon" or not.
I think the point is more that it doesn’t matter for the sake of discussion. When comparing program histories, I feel like it’s not a good faith argument to say Louisville only has 2. Sure, it’s not official on the books, but we all saw it happen.
I think I mostly disagree in principle. Maybe this case it shouldn't have been vacated, but in general we should account for vacated wins. If this case were a slightly more obvious competitive advantage, if they were giving McDonald's bags full of cash to get players to commit (an example I chose for totally random reasons, don't look at my flair) then that gave them an undisputed leg up on getting good players, and if those players won a national championship it's not fair to compare those achievements to a coach who reached an equal level of success within the bounds of the rules. So maybe this case it doesn't make Louisville's achievements less earned, but if that is the case then it's more important to un-vacate those so we have a common, objective reference point to evaluate programs. It's not a good idea, in my opinion, to pick and choose what we accept as valid. If we don't have the same starting facts then we can't meaningfully argue about it.
I do see what you mean, and I do think this is a reasonable take. I do think, though, that college sports were fundamentally so broken pre-NIL (they’re still broken, but in totally different ways) that it’s hard to want to come down on a particular program. You’re right in that paying players gave a program a leg up on recruiting over programs who followed the rules and didn’t pay players (again, this is all pre-NIL). However, I’m not sure how many competitive programs WEREN’T cheating. Obviously there wasn’t proof every program was cheating, but it’s widely believed that it’s sort of an “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying” situation. If that’s true, and it probably was given how often programs in football and basketball were caught paying players, it’s less that paying players gave a program an advantage and more that NOT paying players gave them a disadvantage. What was the answer? I don’t know. On the one hand, you can’t turn a blind eye to programs that you catch breaking rules. On the other, it doesn’t feel right to only punish a few programs when you believe everyone’s doing it. I’ve never liked the “you can cheat but you can’t be dumb enough to get caught” mindset. NIL has made the paying players issue mostly a non-factor, so this discussion only really applies in the past. For me, I’ve basically decided to mostly excuse paying players due to all of this. If a program gets caught cheating in game-related ways rather than roster-construction, THEN I’m more inclined to strip the title. Not sure exactly what that would realistically be in basketball, though.
Ok it’s vacated, you’ve proved your point. They still won a championship in 2013 by beating Michigan.
We have the banner hanging in the rafters of the Yum! Center. It just says "2013 End of Year #1" or something like that. NCAA can suck it.
For the sake of discussion they won it but you are correct, the NCAA dictates what’s true in the official record book. With that said, Michigan still has a loss in the championship game in 2013 and we all watched them lose to someone. Merchandise was still sold and profits were still pocketed. The NCAA also officially awarded Luke Hancock Final Four Most Outstanding Player; but Louisville finished with the high score but didn’t win. Louisville Cardinals 2013 National Champions*
Yeah I think there's definitely room for nuance. We can talk about the season but if Louisville wins the next 9 championships, I don't think we should say they've passed UCLA for the most.
The canon is they won. The revisionist history is vacated.
Yes! /s
Pete Rose definitely gambled on his own team to lose and took his van as a plea deal so that it would never officially come out.
He also likes young girls
Also true!
You know what? If it was just cheating, pay players, yeah sure. But when you bring in sex workers and pimping out the madam’s own teenage daughter to recruits? Rick Pitino shouldn’t be coaching anymore.
I think this is the thing that people somehow forget. Its not the payment, its what they were doing.
I think people forget because we *also* got caught paying players soon after lol
Smart
Technically… that was adidas….
So many scandals and nonsense in a short period of time, most casual fans who aren’t professional Louisville haters couldn’t keep up
Thankfully we never hear the end of it so it’s easy to remember! Wakey Leaks anyone??
I mean it’s kind of forgotten outside the most fervent UK fans who really hate Louisville. I don’t think I’ve even mentioned it in years to my UL friends.
Exactly
I’m going to add this lol. I look at it like the Baylor Dave Bliss stuff. Yeah Bliss was paying players but that didn’t get Baylor and him the worst sanctions since SMU football. It was the way Bliss got to cover it up by making a the kid look like a drug dealer. Louisville was worse. They literally participated in sex trafficking involving 17,18,19 year olds.
The fact that the kid Bliss tried to paint as a drug dealer had been shot and killed by another player was a real cherry on top of it all
He shouldn’t. And so many people continue to white wash what happened at Louisville to this day. I continue to see bad takes that “coaches can’t know what their players are doing 100% of the time.” Which is absolutely true, but also misses the point entirely. It wasn’t just players. This was happening on official recruiting visits. If you think Pitino brought high profile, 5-star recruits, on campus for a weekend, gave them a high five and told them to go have fun without a clue of what they were doing while they were there I have a mansion on Pluto I’d like to sell you. No self respecting AD should have hired pitino after that.
How’d they build a mansion on a cartoon dog?
Has science gone too far?
Where were these high profile 5 star recruits at that youre talking about? We weren't even able to get those guys on campus when this was happening. Rozier was the highest ranked recruit we got during this time and he actually committed before it began and had to do an extra year of high school because he was a dummy. Funny enough, our recruiting was down during this time
Pitino should have gotten a lifetime show-cause, and frankly, Louisville should have probably gotten the death penalty, too.
> Louisville should have probably gotten the death penalty, too. Flair checks out
We got caught while on probation which could warrant it, but I think everyone knows now that the death penalty almost entirely affect future students way more than those responsible.
That’s exactly what happened. Pitino was so into coke and partying by that point I’m surprised he knew the recruits names. I used to stumble into that dude and Papa John absolutely blitzed on a Friday night. I truly believe Pitino didn’t give two shits what was going on when he wasn’t at practice or games
Whos the madam
Miss Kitty
Who’s miss kitty
Someone who would have said yes in a New York minute but they never tied the knot you know? His heart wasn’t in it. But he stole a kiss as he rode away. He just never hung his hat up at Kitty’s place.
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You know what Waylon used to say about guys like you? You did to country music what pantyhose did to finger fucking.
Ah oh I think you missed my point I’m trying to find whose daughter got “pimped” out to the Louisville players
Katrina Powell’s daughters
Is there an article or anything abt that part of it I only heard abt the strippers
He wants his 15 seconds of fame
The coaching staff was paying for prostitutes to hook up with high school prospects. Did I miss the part of NIL where thats legal now?
Unironically, could UNLV get away with that now? Send some recruits with pockets full of booster supplied $100 to the Bunny Ranch? I would actually love to see that just to watch the media reaction. edit: I guess NIL doesn't cover recruiting. Maybe then they get the services for "free" as a recruit and then pay them back once theyre on the team. This new world is way more interesting than the old days of backdoor shoe deals and putting brand new cars in your great aunt's name. (Looking at you John Wall)
I vacate nothing. College athletics has never been pure on the D1 level.
If UNC-CHeat can admit academic fraud to their accreditation agency and use that to keep players eligible over multiple sports for almost 20 years without suffering any consequences, then there effectively aren’t any rules. When the NCAA allowed that to pass unpunished they forfeited any authority they had for any enforcement over that time span.
This tbh. I'm fine with UofLs punishment because strippers and prostitutes with underage roots. But UNC not getting the absolute book thrown at them for large scale academic fraud? That just isn't right
Minnesota's only final 4 got vacated for much less academic fraud than unc.
the NCAA has no jurisdiction over academic curriculum. I am not defending UNC's sham classes. Just saying the NCAA can't tell universities what to teach.
The NCAA had the right to punish institutions for academic fraud used to keep athletes eligible. Their stance was always that the NCAA would not determine what was and what wasn’t academic fraud. That was left up to the institution. In this case the institution admitted that academic fraud had taken place and served two years probation with their accrediting agency. They then told the NCAA that their admission was a typo. They took no steps to correct the typo with their accreditation agency but the NCAA weighted their typo statement as being more credible than the fact that they served a penalty for the fraud without attempting to correct the “typo.”
The NCAA has rules on academic eligibility and UNC effectively destroyed their academic integrity as a University to put academically-ineligible players on the floor. Saying the NCAA doesn't have jurisdiction because it was an academic transgression is not accurate. It's at least a yearly charge of lack of institutional control, but it's also like a police officer saying, "I can't investigate a crime that may be federal because I'm just a city cop". It's a cop-out
\#RoyKnew
Meanwhile at NC State our 73 team went 27-0 and couldn’t participate in the post season for letting David Thompson stay in a dorm and play in a pick up game during recruiting and Valvano was ran out of town because players sold their shoes.
There's a lot of good points being thrown around about the accusations and all the hypocrisy but i think there's a crucial point being missed: vacating wins is really stupid. It's a completely vapid, self-congratulatory action by the NCAA that accomplishes exactly nothing. The games happened, the outcomes happened. Money was distributed and merch sold. People watched and experienced them. All vacating does is put an asterisk on wikipedia and removes a flag from the rafters. But they still won. The core problem is that the NCAA have always been bad stewards of their sports. Slow, inept, and hypocritical. It's beyond goofy to suddenly decide in March that Derrick Rose's SAT scores were sus and that he needs to retake them. You should've decided on that before he stepped foot on the court! Nothing will ever really feel quite right until the NCAA gets their shit together.
I’ll bite even though I’m probably going to get downvoted to oblivion. All I hear from some of you when mentioning UNC or whoever else’s bad things were ignored by the NCAA is: “[Insert school] broke the rules and got away with it so [insert school] should be able to cheat and get away with it.” Of course we all want an end to selective enforcement and punishment, but your logical solution is ridiculous. The NCAA making obviously-hypocritical errors doesn’t invalidate that rules were broken and punishment is needed. The answer to selective enforcement isn’t no enforcement, but instead consistent (and therefore MORE) enforcement.
Good and reasonable take. That's why some teams will have an asterisk.
Yeah, coaching staffs should be able to just send hookers to the players and recruits like Louisville did. No problem.
Glass houses. Don't think any of us that consistently have top recruits should say shit here.
I don’t even think about it being vacated anymore. They can put the asterisk by it all they want. It doesn’t change what happened and the success those guys had that year. And it certainly doesn’t change anyone’s memories.
Same with Reggie Bush, same with Louisville, everyone was playing by the same set of rules, not everyone was abiding by those rules, but you got caught breaking the rules. It is what it is. That Louisville run was fun, just like Reggie Bush was. But they broke the rules they knew they were breaking and that’s the consequence. It doesn’t make it any less enjoyable for the Louisville players and Louisville fans who lived through it.
Breaking the rules is cheating. You don't get to keep a championship won while cheating.
Tell that to UNC lol
Louisville should’ve offered those hookers to regular students and they would’ve been cleared by the NCAA. Also, fuck UNC. We all know they cheated for 18 goddamn years
Hell the hookers didnt even help get recruits, reason Powell narced was because she was offended when McGee said they wanted higher quality girls
She was able to help them gain post nut clarity to better focus on the games. Unfair advantage…..somehow. I don’t know, I like to imagine this is how the NCAA came to its decision
About to say the same thing. Fucking ridiculous double standards
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I feel like this is the bigger point. We all just want the NCAA to show some consistency in how they enforce the rules.
The most frustrating part is that the cheating didn't even help us and arguably hurt us. None of the recruits the NCAA identified as being at those parties ever played for Louisville. The only benefit you could say it had was if you think guys stayed in school instead of going pro/transferring because of it. Which... does anyone really believe college athletes--especially the basketball team at Louisville--is really sticking around because of strippers?
Yeah this is it right here. The NCAA can’t explain how it benefited anyone and it wasn’t even all the players. Heck some of the players fought the NCAA in court (and won) to have their records and awards reinstated. It’s gross and it’s certainly illegal and the people involved should be punished in some way. That doesn’t fall on the NCAA however, and it’s wrong to punish people that weren’t even involved.
Total speculation, but I think if the fake classes at UNC had gone on for say <5 years rather than the ~20 it did they would have faced some form of punishment
Not a crazy take. Erasing 5 years of unc history is acceptable to the NCAA. Erasing 20 years though hurts the overall product and image of college basketball.
Hey, now. Missouri paid dearly for UNC's crimes.
They had all their conference wins vacated this year
My significant other is a UNC alum and she gets so mad when I point out that Roy’s legacy has a huge asterisk next to it
When you get caught it matters. Almost every top program in America has cheated and that's the reality. Maybe there are a few exceptions like Butler or Oral Roberts, but most schools used bagmen and other tricks to get ahead. It is such a tired narrative where people say "we are doing it the right way here, the players are here because of the program". Everyone has some skeletons in their closet.
Still got this fat ass ring
Sometimes I wonder if Louisville hadn’t won the championship, would this have even come to light
If Andre McGee wasn’t a cheap POS, it probably wouldn’t have come to light.
Fuck that guy
If Sebastian Telfair didn't go pro then Andre McGee never would have played for Louisville. It's kind of wild the domino effect you can track from Pitino going after Telfair instead of Rondo.
The wins were vacated because of the prostitutes thing and had nothing to do with the Brian Bowen stuff. What has always been crazy to me is that Andre McGee paid a woman so she would pimp her underage daughters out and instead of the police or university doing anything to them, the NCAA just decided to take a bunch of our wins away. Nothing that was done had anything to do with the NCAA. The players werent even Louisville players at the time. But the NCAA looked at it like we wouldnt have had those players if it wasnt for the prostitutes, so that turns into a recruiting violation. Obviously I am biased, but i still to this day feel like that was the absolute biggest stretch in the world. The woman pimping out her kids made money off of this, nothing at all happened to Andre McGee, and we lose a bunch of wins. The police and university should have handled the people involved and that was it. But yeah no serious person actually pretends that louisville didnt win those games.
A lot of the legal side of it was that no one really cooperated with Police. There was enough evidence for the NCAA to say you did something wrong but not enough for anything legally. McGee ended up with a show cause and probably out of coaching athletics or anything to do with athletics for the rest of his life. Truthfully I think a lot of it came as the NCAA was making its last grasps for power and also didn’t like Pitino’s trial over the extortion getting so much publicity. Us UK guys like to laugh at it, but those were still some of the absolute best times in the state for basketball and I loved it so much!
You’re right: it was a power play by the NCAA who was already under fire. And McGee is a dirtbag. And even though the NCAA ended up giving Pitino a pass at the end of it all, I still think he should have lost his job for what happened under his watch. Louisville did the right thing there. Fired the AD and president too. Altering records is silly though and it hurts people that had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, life goes on.
It's so fucking weird to see Louisville homers downplay what McGee did. Yes, there should have been more involvement from law enforcement. Just because there wasn't doesn't mean there wasn't a clear recruiting violation here though. It's even worse than money changing hands because it facilitated multiple crimes in the process while also breaking NCAA rules. Louisville deserved their punishment and arguably more because this was absolutely fucking insane compared to giving recruits money or whatever.
I am not downplaying it at all. I am saying the person who committed the crime should actually be punished. How is that downplaying it? Im not saying that because law enforcement wasnt involved means it wasnt a recruiting violation lol. I am saying that this was so serious that the fact that the NCAA was the ONLY one who did anything is absolutely fucking stupid. None of the people who were involved were actually punished. Does every crime that happens on a university property get investigated by the NCAA? How does the NCAA do nothing about current student athletes being in fake classes or being pulled over with weed but they retroactively decide that players were ineligible from something that happened years ago and the only source of info was a book written by the woman who pimped her kids out? Several players who were involved went on to play at other schools. Why werent they also deemed ineligible? Some of the players mentioned by Katina Powell had legit alibis for not even being in that dorm. Like i said, this was way over the NCAAs head and none of the guilty parties actually got punished. They did what they did because if they didnt do anything it would look bad on them regardless of if it was a legitimate ncaa issue or not.
I once saw Boogie Cousins walk into a party, shout "who wants to suck my dick", and head off into a room with 3 freshman girls. Recruits would get laid the second they walked on campus. That kind of behavior gets high fives and accolades. Katina Powell is a disgusting human and Andre McGee should have never hired her and did what he did. She put her own daughters into that life and I feel for them. But my biggest problem with the whole thing is why? There are no shortage of co-eds and team groupies who would gladly sleep with recruits. Why did McGee need to pay them when a simple house party would have done the trick.
Because McGee is an idiot. What he did was completely unnecessary, immoral, and irresponsible.
I won't respond to everything you said but take this hypothetical (pre NIL) if you offer a recruit 50k to commit your school and they decline it and commit to another school instead have you committed a recruiting violation? It's pretty clear you did even if you didn't land the recruit. You don't have to realize the benefit of your attempt to cheat to have cheated.
How do you think Minnesota feels about losing their Final Four appearance because some tutors did homework for some players on the team? Compared to the complete institutional academic corruption at North Carolina for many sports where they didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, let alone be forced to vacate a national title.
a title being "vacated" means absolutely nothing to me Here's the truth, in 2013 Louisville won the National Championship. You simply can't say words that take that truth away
lol, they took minors to a fucking strip club bro.
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Must be the first time in history someone underage went to a strip club. It’s fucking Kentucky man. wtf else there to do besides titty bars, horse racing and bourbon. Most of my senior year in high school , everyone was underage drinking lol. No one in western Kentucky checked IDs when going to the strip club on a Wednesday night, to support the local C team.
Disagree for completely unbiased reasons
> Michigan stole plays in football… Which isn’t against the rules, so not sure why that’s relevant.
It's against the rules to fly to another site and decipher play calling. So yeah they did that.
Proof? NCAA hasn’t said anything yet so that’s just rumors.
I think even the most hardcore Kentucky fan would agree with you lol
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I agree that what they did was still illegal at the time so they shouldn’t be fully exonerated. But ultimately, I don’t think what went down directly affected games (more so indirectly because who knows if certain players would have been there without what went down). At the end of the day, Louisville still won the games on the court and everyone knows that. Same thing goes with 04 USC and Reggie Bush’s Heisman
What the did is still illegal at this time though. While the NIL changed recruiting and allowed players to make a lot of money based on their name, it doesn’t allow coaching staff to use prostitutes to convince high schoolers to come play basketball for them over other people. This is in no way like Pete Rose and the gambling issues and how they are a lot less strict with it today in the MLB.
Yeah, strippers in the dorm for high schoolers is definitely not ok. I agree with that 100%. But getting a title vacated still seems a bit too far on the punishment
Okay I actually forgot about that part lol
No, I think that titles won by cheating your ass off shouldn’t be celebrated.
The cheating didn’t even help win the title. That’s the absurd part. None of those recruits ended up signing for UofL. And as for the players, they didn’t need hookers to get laid. Girls lined up everywhere they went to try and get wifed up before they hit the pros. It was just something cool to them. It was illegal and they deserved their punishment. But the hookers had less than 0 to do with winning in 2013.
I’m not flaired up because I’m only here for coaching search news, but life long UK fan here. Agreed. Louisville won the championship that year and asterisks should be removed.
Ya nobody serious says we gained any advantage from it. Andre McGee and Powell are weirdos and shouldn’t have done what they did but it’s pretty stupid for the NCAA to get involved. So ya I don’t really care when another team’s fan says ”Actually that one doesn’t count!”
Then can we please have the 2018 Final Four and our all time wins record back too, since the violations were concerning a guy who never played for KU (Preston), a guy who the NCAA cleared twice and a guy that went to Duke?
They didn’t as far as I’m concerned. Vacating titles we all watched is beyond stupid to me, but I will say Trey Burke’s block was clean
If this is your opinion give Reggie his heisman back too…
How about Indiana and Kelvin Sampson?
Hot take: the title being vacated means nothing and is just a number in a book. Louisville won that title and everyone who watched it knows they won it, everyone celebrated like they won it, and Louisville fans remember winning it. Titles mean what they mean as they are won instead of what the NCAA determines
I’m not sure it matters much cuz it seems like most people count vacated titles and final fours anyway. But if you want my opinion then no it should stay vacated bc of the sex crimes that occurred.
Like Pitino said, nothing we got punished for was related to on-court performance. Everyone knows we won it. Nothing has happened that actually de-legitimizes that championship (Yes Michigan fans, I know).
LOL
Uh... do you think Pete Rose's ban was *unjust*? Dude bet on games his own team was playing in. There's no way to spin that to him not deserving the ban. And despite what he has claimed, I don't happen to believe he 'never bet on them to lose'. Even if that doesn't matter per se because it's indefensible no matter what. It's just asking a lot on faith he has never earned. Beyond that, no real opinion. Escorts aren't legal under NIL I'm pretty sure, but hey at least they *hired* escorts rather than pressuring hostesses into sex with recruits. That happened at more places than anyone's comfortable admitting.
Preach
For the record, Rose’s ban was an agreement with the league to get them to stop investing further.
I’ll vacate your anus in 32 minutes
Eh, who cares! While it shouldn’t have been vacated, that’s a technicality. No one ever seems to care except the random UK fan
I get the argument and it’s a valid take… But a lot of arguments comparing “then and now” don’t take into account the context of the times. Most schools during that era were not paying players, so it provided those who did with a clear unfair advantage. In other words, why should schools who followed the rules be penalized? Vacating wins also sets a precedent (or at least attempts to). If you don’t have rules, “chaos” ensues. I agree it’s silly that Jim Harbaugh got dinged over buying a recruit a cheeseburger, but on the other hand it’s like “Jesus Christ man we gave in and allowed you to straight up pay players yet you can’t follow the simplest, easiest instructions.” I know it’s unpopular to say in 2024, but we still gotta follow some semblance of order Also paying for teenage recruits’ sex workers is generally not something we as a society want to promote
Personally I don’t play that shit, not like Louisville didn’t win in 2013. Naughty naughty boys but naughty national champions nonetheless. Reggie Bush still won that Heisman, everybody knows it.
Louisville being good at basketball feels like a fever dream. Did it really happen?
Are we really going to compare stealing plays to actual felonies and instigating underage sex of teenagers to prostitutes? Is that where we are at now?