I’m glad to see this happening. Louisville needs someone to rebuild it, and Rick Pitino is a master rebuilder. Plus, Denny Crum has left him a fine recruiting class led by Carlos Hurt, one of the best high school point guards in the nation.
Any Louisville and/or Kentucky fans want to chime in?
I am curious to see how UK fans feel about all this.
U of L alum here (Class of 1984).
Denny Crum leaving… $7 million.
Rick Pitino on board… $several million.
Pissing off UK… Priceless!
As a dyed-in-the-wool Kentucky fan, I’m excited about it. I’d love to see Louisville as a top-tier team again, so we can get an in-state rivalry going on on a Duke-UNC level. (There is certainly some excitement surrounding UK-U of L, but it’s been stale in recent years.)
Those who are claiming “treason” are being ridiculous. They all want us to have a coach whose name is synonymous with Kentucky, like Coach K, Dean Smith, or even our own Adolph Rupp or Joe B. Hall. Rick Pitino was not going to be like that. He was a hired gun, and he did a great job of bringing us back from our late 80s nadir. I wasn’t shocked when he moved on, nor was I shocked when his tenure with the Celtics came to an end. Louisville is the ideal job for him, and I’m glad he’s taking it.
I’m sure he’ll get booed off the floor at the next UK-U of L game at Rupp. (And it won’t be the good-natured derision that Dale Brown always got. He was met at every UK-LSU game at Rupp with an arena-wide chant of “Dale Brown Sucks!” until the last game before he retired–when he got a five-minute standing ovation. That’s the kind of rivalry I want with U of L.)
Dr. J
Kentucky Alum here. I’m sure there are many UK supporters who feel Rick Pitino is the worst kind of traitor for going to Louisville but I am not one of them. He had absolutely no ties to Kentucky when he came here and there is no reason to think he should have undying loyalty to us. I agree for the most part with what DoctorJ said, though I must admit I am a bit worried about how UK may fare against U of L (both on the floor and in recruiting) the next few years. I also feel a bit sorry for Tubby Smith. If he loses the U of L game for 3 or 4 years, about the only way the UK faithful will forgive him is if he wins the championship.
Updating this thread after a mere 16 1/2 years:
A lasting memory of Rick Pitino’s earliest days at U. of Louisville was when he snidely commented on how wonderfully cosmopolitan the city was in comparison to Lexington. Not long afterwards, he found out that his team had to play on the road for an extended period because Freedom Hall (Louisville’s arena at the time) was reserved for a farm implement show. I couldn’t stop laughing.
U.K. fans currently are no doubt enjoying the spectacle of Pitino’s downfall and Louisville’s turmoil, but with a tinge of uneasiness, given their own coach’s history of costly violations.
Patino is now suing Adidas, because I guess they forced him to be slimy.
I imagine Pitino in a room with a couple of Adidas folks, his own subordinates, and some FBI agents staring everyone down. Pitino then subtly tries to sneak over and stand next to the FBI and glare alongside them.
“Yeah I can’t believe all this corruption either, huh fellas?”