ESPN REPORT: The Tennessee Volunteers Men’s Basketball Head Coach is Been Fired Due to…
The Rev. Brian J. Shanley drove to the Winged Foot Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, to meet with Rick Pitino after saying a Sunday morning mass on Long Island. In March of that year, St. John’s University president Shanley was in need of a men’s basketball coach. If news leaked out about the meeting, he could virtually foresee the responses he would receive.
Yes, the days of arguing over college basketball ethics and wearing pearls were mostly gone, but Pitino’s legacy surpassed the realities of the new NIL money world. Pitino, a Hall of Fame coach at Iona some twenty miles away, was initially not on the list of candidates Shanley had asked his staff at St. John’s to assemble.
Shanley drove to Pitino’s house that day out of curiosity. In addition to Mike Tranghese.
St. John’s conferred with Tranghese, a former commissioner of the Big East, throughout its quest. When the priest was Providence’s president and the school hired Ed Cooley, a relative unknown, in 2011, Tranghese had previously assisted Shanley. Tranghese claims that having the freedom to say anything you want is one of the nicest aspects of working as a consultant as opposed to an employee.
When speaking with Shanley, he was direct.
“I said, ‘Father, I have no doubt if you hire the right one from this group that this person can have some success,'” Tranghese said. “But it’s been 32 years since your fan base has won. They’ve been running in desperation for so long that they’re worn out.
Rick is the only one who can help you overcome that, get you a fantastic basketball coach, and help you win. We should only discuss Rick and put everyone else out of our minds.”
Tranghese expressed to the priest his opinion that Pitino was a decent man.
Pitino was fired by Louisville in the midst of an FBI investigation into claims of bribery in college basketball in 2017, after he was expelled from the sport. In the end, Pitino was cleared by the NCAA’s external enforcement body, the Independent Accountability Resolution Process, in late 2022, but he carried additional baggage. After the NCAA discovered that one of Pitino’s former staff members had set up strip shows and sex acts for players and prospects, Louisville was forced to give up their 2013 national championship.
At the time of his termination, Pitino was in his mid-60s, but retirement was never truly an option. Nothing could ever match the exhilaration of being on the sidelines, or more importantly, in an empty gym during one of his player development sessions; basketball was his identity. Not even a yacht or a home on a golf course could.
He eventually returned to the game thanks to Greece and the EuroLeague, and Iona helped him return to New York. He was thrust back into the spotlight by St. John’s and the Big East. once more in his element.
Shanley believed he should talk to him as a person, not just as a coach, so he went to Winged Foot in March. The résumé, which included 834 college victories and two national titles, was never contested. In order to gauge Pitino’s current state and the lessons he had gained from what he refers to as coaching purgatory, Shanley needed to know.
He had his new coach after a three-hour conversation and lunch.
“I believe in second chances, and letting people evolve,” adds Shanley. And in my opinion, Rick is not the same person that he was 10, 15, or 20 years ago at this point in his life. The man I spoke with doesn’t raise any concerns in my opinion.
“I believe that some people were somewhat taken aback, if not outright shocked—why would a Catholic institution employ someone with such a background? However, judge not, lest ye be judged, from where I sit.”
At a press conference held at Madison Square Garden on March 21, St. John’s University president Rev. Brian J. Shanley introduces Rick Pitino as the men’s basketball coach for the Red Storm. Getty Images/Peter Binks
In Catholicism, a purgatory is a place of punishment where the deceased go to atone for their transgressions. After purgatory, heaven is thought to be the next stop. Clearly, Shanley did not mean Pitino had gone through purgatory in the strict sense; if he had, a long line of devout Catholics would have applied to be abandoned as a billionaire former basketball coach.
Pitino, meanwhile, felt that period was not without its difficulties. Suddenly, the man who became the only coach in college basketball history to lead three separate schools—including Providence in 1987—to the Final Four was poisonous. Even among NBA circles, it was awkward. In order to get an NBA position, he hired agent Drew Rosenhaus in 2018, as he had previously coached the Boston Celtics and enjoyed success with the New York Knicks. He revealed this to ESPN. Pitino, though, was still unemployed.
The man, who had dedicated six or seven hours a day to the game of basketball for over forty years, found himself with an empty schedule and no idea what to do with it.
“I tried to get a commentating job on ESPN, and they said, ‘No, we’re all booked,’ and they just didn’t want me on the air,” Pitino recounts. “I did the NBA draft; I used to work for them. When Kentucky was on probation, I worked on ESPN games.”
(An ESPN representative stated that Pitino and the corporation have a cordial relationship.)
“So your friends and your family obviously never cancel [you], but the public, from a media standpoint and trying to get work, cancels,” Pitino explains. The NCAA drags things out for so long that you never get your day in court, which is the biggest issue about it. They delayed it for five years, after all, before we could hear the case.”
