Can you believe Rick Pitino?

I don’t mean that he doesn’t tell the truth. I mean do you believe that he did what he did last week?

As smart as he is, he did the best he could of self immolation.

Here we were just a week before the start of football season and the talk about Pitino’s sex life had died down considerably. Danged if he didn’t jump into the stinky stuff once more and stir it up.

When he gets wound up, there’s no stopping the fast-talking New Yorker. Not that University of Louisville officials didn’t try to get him to skip the press conference that left media members and millions of fans who saw it on TV shaking their heads.

Here’s the deal:
Dr. James Ramsey , U of L’s president, advised Pitino not to do it.

So did Pitino’s immediate superior, vice president and director of athletics Tom Jurich.

And one other important person: Steve Pence, his attorney, asked him not to do it.

For the coach’s information: The smartest thing he has done so far is to hire Pence. I have seen him in action when he was an assistant United States attorney for the Western District of Kentucky.

Pence is tough
I was in the Federal Courthouse in Frankfort when I watched him turn a top Kentucky official every way but loose. The jury convicted him (he was speaker of the house of representatives) and he was sent to the Big House.

Pitino would be wise to do what his attorney tells him. Same with his two top U of L bosses.

What’s the matter with Pitino?

He’s spoiled for one thing. He also is so used to having his way that he just goes on willy-nilly no matter what anyone tells him.

Not a freak
Is he a control freak? Rick Pitino is a smart man and is certainly no freak, but he has so many yes men around him that he is always in control. Everything has to go his way.

What difference does it make? It makes a lot of difference. Here’s one small thing. The Lexington Herald-Leader had a Page 1 headline teaser to the first page of the sports section, which was taken up by half of:

1. Three – three! – big photos of Pitino sounding off at his press conference.

2. The news story about what Pitino said.

3. An excellent column by John Clay, whose first paragraph asked: “If Rick Pitino is cracking under the pressure now, how’s he going to handle it when the real shouting starts?”

“How’s the Louisville basketball coach going to react when the creative student bodies across the college basketball landscape begin chanting “Ka-ren Sy-pher, Kar-en Sy-pher”?

Clay also wonders how Pitino will react when they throw unmentionables on the floor.

It probably will get much worse than that.

There’s football
But more than anything else, here’s something that bothered me:

The news about a Lexington player, former Lexington Catholic star Justin Burke, being chosen by U of L football coach Steve Kragthorpe to be the Cardinals’ No. 1 quarterback made  Page 2 (a roundup in sports briefs!) in The Herald-Leader.

Had it not been for Pitino’s ranting and raving, I guarantee the U of L quarterback story would have been on the first sports page and it would have been the story that was teased on A-1. That could have helped U of L football recruiting.

Pitino needs to be reminded – forcefully – by Ramsey and Jurich that there are other sports on the campus besides basketball.

Pitino lectured the local media about the coverage in the New York tabloids, which he said his relatives and friends have to read the “lies” generated in Louisville. He mentioned two tabloids, The New York Post and The New York Daily News, about which he was upset.

Don’t read tabloids
Well, coach Pitino should be reminded that no one is forced to read tabloids. For instance, I read The New York Times every day. There wasn’t one word the next day about Pitino and his press conference. If I were Pitino I would advise my friends to switch to The Times.

Of course, there’s always TV. That blasted ESPN had to show part of the press conference – over and over and over.

Pitino just cut and left without taking any questions.

Had this been a White House press conference, reporters would have been shouting questions. But this was Rick Pitino, “one of college basketball’s hottest coaches.”

He took some jabs at local TV stations, principally WDRB, the Fox outlet in Louisville.

With one glaring exception among Louisville TV and radio stations (which carry his shows), he occasionally gets coverage with  a little bite to it. With WHAS-TV and radio, there’s a love affair. One of his closest friends, Terry Meiners, does TV interviews at halftime before Pitino leaves the floor and also is host of his weekly TV show.

Is there any doubt that Pitino is in control of most of the electronic media?

How much longer?
As for newspapers, columnists of The Courier-Journal and The Herald-Leader have held Pitino’s feet to the fire. Clay and Mark Story aren’t scaredy-cats. Neither is The C-J’s Rick Bozich.

The U of L coach could be helped a bit if he realized that one does not start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

How much longer is Pitino going to be allowed to sound off without even thinking of other sports?

Only the president and A.D. can answer that.