Pitino doesn't deserve hate or firing squad

Hate Mail: Diving into personal areas

Rick Pitino can't lose his job. Not for this. That's my position if not my prediction, because I was starting to think Pitino -- who has admitted to giving a mistress $3,000, which she apparently used for an abortion -- just might lose his job after the uncomfortable University of Louisville president finished taking the public's temperature.

The public seems to be steaming mad.

And that's understandable. Kentucky is a conservative state. Family values and so forth.

But Pitino can't lose his job. Not for this. Not if this is the country I'm positive it once was, and I'm pretty sure still is.

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Unless there's a component of sexual harassment involved, which there is not in this case, you don't get fired for having an affair with a grown woman. Maybe you do in some places, places where they stone people guilty of infidelity, but not here. Nor do you get fired for impregnating her, or even for giving her $3,000. Depending on whom you believe, the money was for insurance or an abortion. You don't get fired for it, whatever it was.

Not in my America.

It would be nice if we could all agree on that, but this is where some of your biases will come into play. And that's understandable, too. This is what we do as sports fans. We use every morsel of negative information at our disposal to beat down the other side, even when those morsels are borderline irrelevant or even completely inappropriate. For example, Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger were accused of rape -- accusations that looked as bogus as Barry Bonds' biceps -- and fans around both leagues rejoiced. The Lakers and Steelers are great teams. Kobe and Ben are great players. What's bad for those players is bad for their teams. That's how people think.

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That's how people will think here, too, with Rick Pitino. If you don't like Pitino -- maybe you root for a competing Big East team, or maybe you're a Kentucky fan still infuriated that he's at Louisville, or maybe you don't like the way he slicks back his hair -- now is your chance. It's dog-pile time, and that's Pitino at the bottom. Fire the cheatin' SOB!

Right?

Wrong.

Every now and then, even in something as passionately irrational as team sports, we should stop rooting for what's right for our side, and start rooting for what's simply ... right. In this case, we should root against something that's wrong.

And firing Pitino would be wrong.

If we're going to fire people for having an affair, the unemployment rate in this country would shoot to roughly 50 percent. The abortion, however objectionable you find it, is irrelevant here. It's legal, and it doesn't matter if Pitino paid for it. That, too, is legal. Pitino's Roman Catholicism, and the hypocrisy of traveling with a priest while paying for a mistress's abortion, is an issue between Pitino and God. But God isn't the president at Louisville.

James Ramsey is that president, and his initial media statement had me thinking Pitino might want to start gathering moving boxes. Ramsey has since expressed his support for the coach, but in his initial statement he indicated that Pitino had lied to him months ago when they first discussed the other woman, Karen Sypher, who has been indicted for trying to extort money, cars and college tuition from Pitino. Sypher retaliated with a claim that Pitino raped her, a claim that is as believable as vampire fiction.

"Several months ago, Coach Pitino informed me about the alleged extortion attempt," Ramsey said. "I've now been informed that there may be other details which, if true, I find surprising."

While Ramsey appeared to be vaguely on the anti-Pitino side of this equation, Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich was not. Ramsey suggested Pitino lied to him. Jurich emphatically said that is not the case.

"Coach Pitino has been truthful with us about this matter all along and we stand by him and his family during this process," Jurich said in a statement.

Still, Pitino's contract has all sorts of clauses that could allow Louisville to fire him. There is the matter of "employee's dishonesty with Employer" and "acts of moral depravity" in addition to "disparaging media publicity ... that damages the good name and reputation" of Louisville.

Taken one by one:

If Pitino lied to Ramsey a few months ago, well, he has given Ramsey the legal excuse to fire him. A lie that big, to your employer, probably should get you fired. So I couldn't argue that.

But that garbage about moral depravity or disparaging publicity? Complete crap. Having an affair isn't moral depravity. It's life. Unless Louisville wants to be on the record as saying roughly half of the American population is morally depraved. If so, Louisville should put its morals where its mouth is and make that position clear on future fund-raising letters to alumni. The school wouldn't raise 20 bucks.

This isn't Alabama football coach Mike Price making an ass of himself at a strip club and getting himself fired for cavorting with strippers. This isn't Iowa State basketball coach Larry Eustachy making an ass of himself at a drunken college party, kissing up college girls and losing his job. This is a grown man (Pitino) and a grown woman (Sypher) doing what grown-ups sometimes do. In private. It went public only because she became a criminal, trying to extort money from Pitino. That's not his fault.

An abortion, while objectionable to many people on ethical or religious grounds, isn't "moral depravity" either. And as for bad publicity, well, look. Schools like to pretend the media doesn't matter 98 percent of the time, so don't turn around and use us to justify the firing of a basketball coach who had an affair. That's weak. Be better than that, Louisville.

As for the rest of us, we need to be better than what we've been, too. The glee we take in the discovery that an immortal is just as human as the rest of us? It's sickening. Jesus-preaching Josh Hamilton gets photographed with women and whipped cream and tongues everywhere. Roethlisberger and Bryant get accused of rape. Pitino has this scandal. And the haters line up. Someone falls down -- and you kick.

Come on. Be better than that. This isn't a sporting mistake. It isn't a loss on the field or an NCAA violation or even a stupid quote to the media. This is real life stuff, and if you're using it as a hammer to hit Pitino on the head, then you're a bully.

And if Louisville tries to use this to fire Pitino, then Louisville is un-American. The school's main color, however, is red. Maybe it could open a campus in Beijing.