You don't like Rick because Calipari had beef with him. That's all this is. Rick flipped off a fan heckling him. In a moment of frustration, we're all human. Cal talked down to the fans for YEARS. Called us bennies, said the SECT doesn't matter etc etc. Rick left the program on a high note and with a loaded roster that won another title in 1998. Calipari tanked the program and bailed in the middle of the night to an SEC rival. Big difference.
I think we can all agree that Pitino has shown many times that he is a great coach. Like most coaches, he’s also had some not so great times. He’s had an amazing coaching career, and that’s about where his good qualities stop.
As a human being, he has done some disgusting things. Him giving one fan the finger is nothing in terms of what he has done. Would you want your 18 kid participating in the parties that happened in the dorms at UL? I'm not saying other people haven’t done similar, but he got caught, and that’s really just one instance. We probably know a small fraction of his antics and it is highly likely that what we don’t know is just as bad, maybe worse. He also coached at UL, our most hated rival, and while there, this board hated him. The longest thread in board history was about UL and Pitino hiring strippers for recruits and players. There wasn’t a person here that wasn’t overjoyed at what came to light. There was celebration about Pitino being involved and likely getting canned. Reading two pages of that thread and seeing the memes, the names he was called, the jokes, it will remind you real quick just how hated he was. This wasn’t that long ago.
I don’t mind him being here and fans celebrating his success in coaching. That’s about the extent that I would want him involved in the program and I think that it will be a long while before another appearance.
