Shout out to the UCLA boosters lobbying for Rick Pitino.
That's the big argument on the board right now it's kind of funny. People are actually citing his autobiography as some "proof" that maybe he didn't do anythign wrong. Many of them the same ones insisting Arizona should have fired miller. I have pointed out repeatedly that if Louisville decided to fire him and they did, and they defended against his first civil suit, and they did, clearly they had VERY strong reasons to think he was lying to them. I actually found a story that says Louisville asked Pitino to admit to essentially a list of 53 items in their defense against his civil suit(wanting money).
Among those 53 were that Dawkins visited Louisville 9 days before he was arrested by the FBi, Pitino's lawyer responded that Rick would issue a statement that did NOT admit to that, that said Pitino did NOT know Dawkins was an agent, that if Dawkins was on campus, Pitino didn't know and wasn't covering it up. It was the absolutely definiion of lawyering up. He insisted he'd known Dawkins mildly for years, he recruited a kid off Dawkins AAU program(Dorian's pride) and that Dawkins had talked to him in the past about other kids. So when Dawkins asked him about Brian Bowen it wasn't a surprise. Pitino says he had no idea who Bowen was(?) so he asked an assistant, texting Padgett who responded he's the #1 uncommitted recruit in the country yes we want him if we can get him. So Pitino then told them es we want him. Spent weeks telling people I can't believe it, least effort ever to get a top prospect, we spent no money traveling to see him, he came to see us on his own dime. Said it was Gatto initially who asked him but that Dawkins had come up too.
My answer has been teh same all along, if he knew UCLA should not touch him, if he didn't know, UCLA should not touch him because it's the coaches job to know what the hell is going on. When the top uncommitted recruit in the country falls into your lap like that an experienced coach HAS to be thinking what is goign on. Pitino admits he asked Bowen and his dad that exact question and their answer was we really liked MSU and Arizona but players we though were going pro(Bridges, Trier and Alkins) stayed, so here we are. And that was enough for Pitino. He said he was surprised Adidas was talking to him about a kid who played for a Nike program but in the end he believed the story.
When you add in the hooker stuff and the dancer who blackmailed him etc I want no part of him. Remember how Larry Brown got SMU on probation, he said at my age I decided the NCAA was wrong, so I helped a few kids. That's the same concern with Pitino IMO at his age with his history, what's to stop him just deciding I want to win an NC at UCLA and I don't care what the NCAA thinks.
Non starter for me and I'd say the majority of UCLA fans I know, but there's a pretty substantial lobby for him.
Side note as mentioned here before there actually is talk about Larry Brown, the current rumor is that he's agreed to work as an assistant if UCLA were to hire Watson.