Shaun Powell

He didn’t kill anyone. Didn’t steal millions from clients (only the Celtics). Didn’t pump himself full of hard dope. Didn’t harm a child, or his boss, or run over a pedestrian or go Michael Vick on the house pooch, things that will get you in trouble these days.

Rick Pitino messed around, he admitted, with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

So how much trouble should that fetch him? If any?

Well, this is clear: The sordid and strange drama involving Pitino and what he ordered for dessert at a restaurant will forever change the public image of one of the country’s premier college basketball coaches. The coach who won a national title and turned around big-time programs is not walking through that door anymore. The guy known for his Brioni suits and manicured follicles and New Yawkese charm and up-tempo teams is now a cheating bum who got busy with a woman at a restaurant. That’s low. In the minds of us who are easily offended, he goes from Slick Rick to Sick Rick.

Of course, the only person on Earth with something at stake here is Mrs. Pitino, who’s now free to kick her husband out of the house and, if she chooses, in that spot where it hurts. That’s usually forgotten when we’re presented with these moral episodes involving famous people. Sure, society might be repulsed to a degree, but the real damage here is confined to the family and especially the spouse who must deal with something he/she never caused.

But there’s a twist in this particular case. If some rock star or rapper did what Pitino is alleged to have done, then his cred actually goes up a notch. He’ll probably get a few back slaps, some high fives and might even sell more CDs. That’s the way it goes in pop culture, where such behavior is rarely held against him by the public. If nothing else, it’s what we’ve come to expect.

Same goes for plenty of others among the less famous. Hey, it happens. Forgive and move on.

Pitino, though, is a leader of impressionable young men who take their cue from the important adults in their lives. Like, their basketball coach.

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Therefore: Shouldn’t his job be on the line here?

Strictly from a contractual standpoint, Louisville is asking itself that same question right now. As they brace for the vortex of reaction from within and beyond campus, school officials are weighing whether Pitino committed an act of “moral depravity” or engaged in “willful misconduct” or did something that “greatly” offended the public. That’s the legalese in the morals clause of his contract.

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Of course, there’s another way to interpret the jargon: Is he winning enough games? That’s what, you know, it always comes down to in most cases in sports, and this one’s no different.

That doesn’t make it right, but in big-time sports where winning is placed above all, doesn’t make it wrong, either.