LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The NCAA death penalty, the much-discussed but 30-years-dormant nuclear option of college sports, is about to make a comeback.

Louisville basketball, one of the most successful in history on the court and for decades the most lucrative hoops program in America, prepare for your demise.

The program should be shut down, if the bombshell allegations announcement of allegations Tuesday prove to be true. If that doesn’t happen, the NCAA is useless.

Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino should be gone, a gilded career ending in disgrace. It seems highly plausible that he will take athletic director Tom Jurich with him, a man who lifted an entire department, and now oversees its ruination.

They were heroes here, for many years. And now they have been party to multiple scandals and a stain so deep on the basketball program that it may never fully go away. SMU football knows the feeling.

Louisville already was ordered by the NCAA in the spring to vacate its 2013 national title because of stripper parties for recruits and players funded by a former program staffer. That was embarrassment enough. Now there is this, very strong evidence that the school is involved in high-dollar buying of players.

Some 28 years ago, Pitino took over a scandal-ridden Kentucky program and promised to clean it up and win the right way. He referenced the Sports Illustrated cover on the scandal in Lexington, a cover that read “Kentucky’s Shame.” He then achieved his greatest success there, winning a 1996 national title with one of the most powerful teams ever assembled.

The United States Attorney’s Office’s announcement Tuesday could spell the end of Rick Pitino … and Louisville basketball. (AP) More

Then Pitino followed it up with a national title at Louisville. He was the only coach to win championships at two different schools, cementing his status as an all-time great. And now it almost certainly will end in a fall of Shakespearian dimension.

It will end with Louisville’s shame.

Jurich, the man who stood by his basketball coach through glory and tawdriness, will be part of the shame. He elevated the football program, but showed enough desperation to bring back the tainted Bobby Petrino. He got Louisville into the Atlantic Coast Conference, a destination beyond the school’s wildest dreams, but now the league must be regretting the baggage it brought.

Pitino issued a statement Tuesday evening through his lawyer, Steve Pence, that said: “These allegations come as a complete shock to me. If true, I agree with the U.S. Attorneys Office that these third-party schemes, initiated by a few bad actors, operated to commit a fraud on the impacted universities and their basketball programs, including the University of Louisville. Our fans and supporters deserve better and I am committed to taking whatever steps are needed to ensure those responsible are held accountable.”

Pitino was shocked by the last scandal, too. Playing the shocked head coach undermined by the rogue assistant isn’t going to fly a second time, like it did with Andre McGee and the strippers. That worked once – and many people were surprised it worked then. Now? The accountability needs to go to the top.

Pitino and Jurich both need to go. And the basketballs need to be put away for a year or more.

Shut the thing down.

There’s no other hometown college basketball team in the city of Louisville, arguably the most passionate metro area in America when it comes to that sport. It could happen. To devastating financial and civic effect.

The Cardinals program is not named in the announcement of charges released by the United States Attorney’s Office on Tuesday morning. None of its employees are charged. For now, those charges are reserved for assistant coaches at Arizona, USC, Oklahoma State and Auburn. There also are charges against an array of third parties who for years have made the greasy wheels of college basketball turn: an Adidas executive, financial advisers and agents.

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