Rick Pitino's PR Team and the $3,000 Lie

Every time news breaks, like the Rick Pitino imbroglio did Tuesday night, I always feel a little twinge of sympathy for the lawyer who ends up hurling a semantic argument into the whirlwind of 24-hour news coverage. These days news coverage has room for two opinions: you're right or you're wrong. The shades-of-gray approach doesn't sell.

But that doesn't mean lawyers don't try to split hairs. Think Bill Clinton asking what the meaning of is, is. Inevitably, these hair-splitting defenses blow up. Which brings me to this, according to his lawyer, Rick Pitino didn't pay for Karen Sypher's abortion. Heavens no. What he did was pay for an uninsured woman to get health coverage .... which she then, oh by the way, used to have an abortion. That's a great story except for one flaw, pregnancy is a preexisting condition. So adding health insurance doesn't cover an already existing pregnancy.

Oops.

Bad excuse. But not as bad as the 10 excuses for the $3,000 the legal team considered and rejected. Read on for those.

At moments of crisis like these, I always picture the frenzied public relations team -- which represents a variety of conflicting interests, the university, the coach, the lawyer -- all huddling together to come up with a response that minimizes the damage for everyone. You've got to make sure you repent while protecting yourself from further legal liability, apologize while being humble, and whatever you do, don't take a question.

Don't take questions is the first advice any lawyer gives in these circumstances. I attended a legal seminar about how to deal with media interest for famous clients and the only quote I remember from the entire day was one white-haired lawyer slamming his hand down on the table. "Whatever you do, don't let the damn client take questions. Read the statement and get out."

Not surprisingly, Pitino read his statement and got out without taking questions. Which means we still have an awful lot of things left to be unpacked here. Among them, how can you be certain you're pregnant in two weeks? How can you be so careful in your personal life that you have a designated driver, yet so reckless that you have sex in a restaurant while your designated driver is still there? How many other college coaches are reading these stories right now and thinking, crap, this happened six years ago, I thought I was in the clear. Speaking of which, why not keep paying the extortion fee? The amount of money that Karen Sypher was demanding is miniscule given what Pitino made. Yeah, the truth can set you free, but it can also get you fired. So I guess the truth, more accurately, can get you free time.

Can you imagine the e-mails Kentucky politicians are getting? One public school, Kentucky, gets to demand that another public school, Louisville, fire its coach for an off-court act. So you get to be morally judgmental and it helps your college program? That's a daily double in the South, the only thing better is when the rival church's preacher gets sent up the river for tax evasion.

After all the internal public relations debate, Pitino's lawyer attempted to argue that the $3,000 he gave Sypher was for health insurance and not an abortion. It was a bad argument that made Pitino look worse. Fortunately for Pitino it wasn't as bad as the 10 rejected suggestions for how to explain away the $3,000.

Here goes:

1. It was a down payment for a hit on Christian Laettner.
Even though they starred in that ridiculous commercial this spring, I don't believe that Pitino wouldn't like to give Laettner a nice elbow to the kidney at some point. The charge of the Aminu Timberlake brigade.

This has the added benefit of straining Kentucky political alliances. On the one hand Kentucky fans want Pitino gone, on the other hand, at least the money was going to take out the top nemesis in the state of Kentucky.

2. Abort? I thought she said a port. Portuguese wine, you know, I love it.
Remember when there was a controversy over whether Hillary Clinton called a Jewish campaign worker, "a Jew bastard" or merely yelled, "you bastard." This could be the equivalent. Pitino claims Sypher merely asked for a bottle of wine that she otherwise couldn't afford, and he helped her out.

"She's a oenophile, I'm a oenophile," he'd say, shrugging his shoulders.

3. Strength coach payments for personal training sessions.
Quick question, how many people out there would marry someone that they knew had a sexual relationship with their boss? What's more, how many people would marry a divorcee with four kids, who slept with their boss at a restaurant on the night she met him?

Would anyone do this? Isn't this when you pull your friend aside and say, "I know, I know, she's pretty hot and you're not getting any younger, but, man, she slept with Ricky P. at the restaurant while she was married. And he wasn't the first one. Won't be the last either."

Every male friend of this strength coach should get punched between the legs by the Louisville president.


4. The money went for a prop bet placed on the first of March to this query: Kentucky will be in better shape as a basketball program than Louisville within six months. 100-to-1 odds.
The only people happy about this story are Kentucky fans. Seriously, they're ecstatic, almost as happy as they were about Patrick Sparks' three-pointer against Michigan State putting the game into overtime in the Elite 8. You should see the gloating e-mails from Kentucky fans.

Think about it from their perspective. In the middle of March, Louisville, their most hated basketball rival on the planet, entered the NCAA Tournament as the overall No. 1 seed. Meanwhile, Kentucky slinked into the NIT where it bowed out on the road at Notre Dame. Five months ago, the Wildcats were in the midst of the Billy Gillispie implosion and now Louisville has to fight a battle to keep Pitino as its coach, they've got Coach Cal and the top recruiting class in the country, and as if that weren't enough, Pitino's top basketball recruit just left high school early and signed to play pro basketball in Israel.

I mean, in all honesty, what are the odds on any of this actually happening? Much less all of it?

C-A-T-S.

5. The money was supposed to go to Derrick Rose. Coach Cal offered him half that to sign. We doubled it.
Admittedly, this would lead to NCAA probation. But it would be bittersweet because it might lead to Coach Cal getting fired too. Speaking of which, is there any other state in the country with a dirtier collegiate aura than Kentucky? It's a penumbra of filth. The only state that could even come close would be Connecticut, and that's based on Jim Calhoun by himself.

6. The money was for carpet-cleaning in the old Rick Pitino's restaurant in Lexington.
Does anyone else wonder what went down after hours when Pitino was in Lexington and had his own restaurant?

No wonder you couldn't get in that place on basketball weekends.

7. We were thinking about adopting children from Africa and that was the adoption fee. Karen offered to be our go-between.
In general, if you're white, being willing to adopt a child from Africa gives you a pass for anything else you've done wrong in life. No matter what.

8. The money was a consulting fee for Charles Barkley since Sir Charles can curse people on air, go drunk-driving for oral sex with prostitutes, and gamble millions of dollars. All of which makes him more beloved.
Barkley's advice to Pitino was controversial. "If I got caught having sex in a restaurant, I'd just have Kenny and Ernie turn it into a funny skit."

Like this.

Ernie: "You talked to a married woman's kids before you had sex with her?"

Barkley: "I talk to everyone's kids before I have sex with their mom in the restaurant. Ask Kenny."

Everyone laughs.

Kenny: "At least I got a ring."

9. Replica championship rings from 1996
Pitino has given up on actually winning another championship at Louisville. So to make the team feel better, he had the 1996 Kentucky basketball rings recast and gave them out to the Cardinals team.

"I want you to know what a championship ring feels like," Pitino said, "because I'm never going to win another one."

10. White Suit Dry-Cleaning
I hear they can get soiled fairly easily.