Time for things to get harsh at Louisville

The sport of College Basketball was shocked recently when four assistant coaches and a major sportswear company representative were arrested by the FBI for transferring and giving thousands of dollars to high school basketball recruits. But, these were just assistant coaches, not head coaches and an entire program. 

The University of Louisville was charged for offering five star recruit Brian Bowen $100,000 to play for the Cardinals his freshman season. This money was funded through Louisville’s apparel company, Adidas, to make sure Rick Pitino, Louisville’s head coach, would make Bown sign a shoe deal with Adidas once he turned pro. 

Not only is this act against what the NCAA prides itself on, amateurism, it is also not the first scandal in Pitino’s career. Finally, Louisville fired their corrupt coach and his Athletic Director came down with him, because of this scandal. But, the university needs to be punished severely for it.  

Louisville was certainly the biggest university to start participating in “the dark side of college basketball.” It can be argued they are the reason why coaches at USC, Oklahoma State, Auburn and Arizona were arrested by the FBI for paying basketball recruits. Louisville is one of the blue blood programs of College Basketball, but it does not disqualify them from the “death penalty.” 

The NCAA should ban Louisville basketball for an entire season, not let them play any games and hold no practices, much like they did with SMU in the mid 1980s. They should also not allow the Cardinals to play in the postseason for five years no matter what record they had. On top of all of that, the NCAA should cut the number of scholarship players Louisville is allowed to have.  

Louisville would not be the only school effected by this either. Other schools would not do it as well, because now they know that the NCAA means business. If these actions were to be enforced against Louisville, amateurism could still exist in college athletics.