Who Is Rick Pitino? Controversial Basketball Coach Wrapped Up FBI NCAA Probe

Rick Pitino, the head coach of the University of Louisville basketball team, as well as Tom Jurich, the school's athletic director, have been put on administrative leave amid a federal bribery probe.

Pitino’s lawyer, Steve Pence, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he had been "effectively fired." Pitino has served as the Louisville Cardinals' head coach since 2001.

Louisville is being investigated for a "pay to play" scandal by federal prosecutors. The allegation states that the program was involved in sports apparel giant Adidas bribing a player or players to come to the school and then represent the shoe company once they turned pro.

Brian Bowen, a five-star basketball recruit, is believed to be at the center of the FBI's investigation of Louisville. According to the Courier-Journal, an Adidas executive named Jim Gatto allegedly paid the player’s family $100,000.

In August, Louisville announced that a new sponsorship contract with Adidas worth $160 million over 10 years.

Ironically, Pitino in 2014 was critical of the role Nike and Adidas play in the recruitment of athletes due to the shoe the player wears in the Amateur Athletic Union.

"I don’t personally like [that] I can’t recruit a kid because he wears Nike in the AAU circuit. I mean that’s...I’ve never heard of such a thing and it’s happening in our world. Or he’s on the Adidas circuit, so the Nike schools don’t want to [recruit him]," Pitino said.

"I never thought that shoes would be the reason you recruit players. And it’s a factor. It’s a factor. And I think we need to deal with that. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of young athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents and coaches have more of a say than peripheral people, but that’s easier said than done. I don’t know how to do that. It’s like trying to get the runners [agents] out of the game. I know we try our best to do that, but I don’t know. I don’t know how you do it."

Pitino, 65, is a successful basketball coach, winning the NCAA Championships twice, with the University of Kentucky in 1996 and with the Louisville in 2013. The New York City native, who played guard at the University of Massachusetts in the early 1970s, also brought a third team, Providence College, to the Final Four of the Championship tournament in 1987. Pitino had two stints as a professional coach, with the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks.

Pitino has been linked to some notable controversies.

In 2009, he was embroiled in an extortion case over an extramarital affair in 2003 in which he gave the woman $3,000 for an abortion. The woman then tried to extort Pitino for $10 million to stay quiet about the affair.

Louisville was hit by another sex scandal in 2015 when a former escort claimed the program paid strippers and prostitutes to dance for and have sex with players and recruits. Louisville imposed a self-ban from the 2016 postseason and the NCAA suspended Pitino for the first five games of this season for not properly monitoring his basketball program.

The current federal probe charged four assistant basketball coaches — Chuck Person of Auburn University, Emanuel Richardson of Arizona University, Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State and Tony Bland of the University of Southern California — of taking bribes to steer players towards certain financial advisors and sports agents. The allegations were brought forward Tuesday.

The coaches are charged with bribery conspiracy, solicitation of bribes, honest services fraud conspiracy, honest services fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and Travel Act conspiracy. They each face up to 80 years in prison.

A second separate set of allegations are the ones that involve Louisville.

“The nature of the charges brought by the federal government are deeply disturbing,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement. “We have no tolerance whatsoever for this alleged behavior. Coaches hold a unique position of trust with student-athletes and their families, and these bribery allegations, if true, suggest an extraordinary and despicable breach of that trust. We learned of these charges this morning and of course will support the ongoing criminal federal investigation.”

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said that it will continue its investigations.