BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) — Samford University has canceled an upcoming event featuring Rick Pitino, the University of Louisville basketball coach in the news for a scandal involving adultery and abortion.
Philip Poole, executive director of university communication at the Baptist-affiliated school in Birmingham, Ala., said the dean of Samford's Cumberland School of Law spoke to Pitino Aug. 12. The two "mutually agreed" it would be best for all concerned to cancel a leadership luncheon featuring the championship-winning coach that had been scheduled for Sept. 10.
According to media reports, Pitino, a practicing Roman Catholic, admitted to police that he had consensual sex six years ago with a woman now charged with trying to extort him and paid for her to have an abortion.
Karen Sypher, whom Pitino says he met while drinking in a Louisville bar on Aug. 1, 2003, was indicted in May on federal charges of extortion and making false statements to the FBI.
Sypher entered a plea of not guilty. She claims that Pitino raped her and gave her $3,000 to have an abortion. Police have said they doubt her credibility. Prosecutors accuse her of demanding cars, a house and $10 million from Pitino to keep quiet about the tryst.
Pitino admits to having an encounter with Sypher, but his lawyer claimed the coach thought the money he gave her was for health insurance and not an abortion.
Pitino apologized Aug. 12 for an "indiscretion six years ago" and said he has no plans to resign as Louisville's men's basketball coach. University officials have, so far, backed him.
Poole said the Pitino luncheon at Samford, arranged by some Cumberland alumni and co-sponsored by the university's business school, had not been widely publicized beyond a save-the-date e-mail sent to invitees. It became news after an e-mail from John Carroll, dean of the law school, announcing it had been canceled was leaked to the press.
Pitino, 57, is in his eighth year as Louisville's head basketball coach. He has a career record of 521 wins and 191 losses and won a national title while at the University of Kentucky in 1996.
While it does not appear the scandal will cost Pitino his job, it has sullied the reputation of the married father of five. He has raised millions of dollars for charity through the Daniel Pitino Foundation, named in honor of an infant son who died in 1987 at the age of 6 months from congenital heart failure.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.