Planet Pitino

The world Rick Pitino inhabits is not this world. That ought to be crystal to everyone by now.

No, on Planet Pitino, the head coach never sees nothin'. He's not accountable for what goes on in his program, even when it happens right under his nose. If his awful, awful assistants do something corrupt, how can their stink ever touch him?

After all (just to remind you), he didn't see nothin'. And if he didn't see nothin', how can he be fired?

This is essentially the argument his lawyers are making, as Pitino claims once more that he's blameless as a babe in the latest corruption to embroil his Louisville program. First it was hookers turning the basketball building into a bordello; now it's the shoe company that pays Pitino millions bribing his underlings.

But, hey. He's just the head coach. All he's done is pocket 98 percent of the money Adidas threw at Louisville to wear its shoes. If his assistants were taking additional bribes under the table, how's he responsible for that?

And so he's contesting his firing by Louisville, an act of chutzpah breathtaking in its scope. Never mind the fact he should have been gone after the hooker thing, when he presented the absurd argument that, nope, he didn't see nothin', even though it was happening in a building he inhabited every day. Now he's claiming, essentially, that he can't be fired for this, either, on account of he's not accountable for the actions of those who work for him.

On Planet Pitino, this makes perfect sense.

Everywhere else ...

Well, everywhere else, it's pretty much revealed truth that when you make as much money as Pitino did as coach of a premier college basketball program -- a Hall of Fame coach, by the way -- you are damn skippy responsible for everything that goes on in your program, whether you knew about it or not (and in Pitino's case, the "not" remains highly suspect). The greater your reward, the greater your accountability. Especially when you have the track record for sleaze Pitino does.

The man is slipperier than an oiled eel, and he's gotten away with it for a long time. It's not just the Adidas thing, which is the subject of a criminal investigation. It's not even just the hooker thing, or the having-sex-on-a-table-in-a-restaurant thing -- which should have gotten him fired, too, but didn't because the woman he had sex with was foolish enough to try to blackmail him.

Still, it added to his body of work, so to speak. And if it took the FBI to wake Louisville up to that body of work, then good for the FBI.

He's claiming Louisville doesn't have the right to fire him?

Wait'll the Hall of Fame tries to fire him, which ought to happen next.

That sound you hear is Pitino's head exploding.