By JACOB POLACHECK
The NCAA’s Infractions Appeals Committee announced on Tuesday that it upheld the Committee on Infractions’ ruling that Louisville must vacate 123 wins, including the 2013 title and the 2012 Final Four appearance, as punishment in the school’s escort case.
“We believe the NCAA is simply wrong to have made this decision,” said Louisville Interim president Greg Postel in a Press Conference on Tuesday.
The appeals committee also upheld the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions penalty that requires the university to return to the NCAA money received through conference revenue sharing for its appearances in the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships.
It is the first time in modern Division I men’s basketball history that a championship was vacated. There is no further opportunity for appeal.
“The memories are there but some of the formal recognition will not be,” said Postel.
Postel said the monetary loss of the NCAA sanctions is “well under $1 million.”
The decision was the last step in an infractions process that lasted more than two years after Katina Powell‘s bombshell book prompted an NCAA investigation in October 2015.
In the Committee on Infractions’ decision, the panel found that a former Louisville director of basketball operations acted unethically when he committed serious violations by arranging striptease dances and sex acts for prospects, student-athletes and others, and did not cooperate with the investigation. The violations in the case resulted in some men’s basketball student-athletes competing while ineligible.
Following the original Louisville self-imposed a postseason ban for the 2016 ACC and NCAA tournaments, and later added self-imposed recruiting sanctions after confirming Powell’s allegations that former Cards basketball staffer Andre McGee paid women thousands of dollars and gave them game tickets in exchange for them dancing for and having sex with players and recruits.
So Rick Pitino never coached Louisville and Kentucky to NCAA titles?
It was all just a dream, just like Bobby Ewing leaving Dallas.
https://t.co/nrhXYMWJd0 via @YouTube— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) February 20, 2018
Does Pitino get the tattoo removed, too? https://t.co/0qEFDFQ7rp
— Josh Newman (@Joshua_Newman) February 20, 2018
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