Male Cheerleader Almost Ruins U of L Game

Today's UofL game versus Pittsburgh seemed like a done deal as the final seconds approached. The Cards' Kyle Kuric scored a three-point shot putting them 62-57. But as for what happened next, I'll let uoflsports.com explain:

That's when things got a little bizarre.

The clock didn't stop after the basket, which put the Cardinals up 62-57, and the horn sounded. Some Louisville cheerleaders on the baseline raced onto the floor, with one male cheerleader grabbing the ball and tossing it in the air.

Officials called Louisville for a delay of game technical foul and put .5 seconds back on the clock. Pitt's Ashton Gibbs knocked down two free throws and the Panthers had one last chance to tie, but Gibbs couldn't get off a desperation heave in time.

"All good things have to come to an end, and the male cheerleader (at Louisville) comes to an end," joked Louisville coach Rick Pitino. "Hopefully he'll learn the rules."

You can see it on YouTube here, but it happens so fast that some viewers are missing it. It's towards the very end of the clip - watch the goofball dressed all in white come walking onto the court and grab the ball, then flip it recklessly high in the air, not even caring where it might land.

The technical foul called because of cheer-dude's unexpected intervention meant that Pitt had a chance for two free-throws and control of the ball, giving them a narrow but real chance to turn it around.

15 Second Man

Okay, everyone's already talking it to death and it is sort of funny - 'cept it ain't - so let's address it here and then quickly move on.

As everyone's nattering about around the water cooler lately, Rick Pitino was forced to make some weird and embarrassing statements in the course of his court testimony - namely, that his lovemaking to Karen Sypher lasted all of fifteen seconds.

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, folks. Have a good laugh at someone else's expense, because that someone has achieved more in his lifetime than you ever could - even if you devoted the entirety of your short remaining years on this planet to it.

As Joe Kennedy once said to Frank Sinatra, "the bigger the man, the bigger the mistake." That's life.

Now that Pitino has been vindicated and the psycho-stalker who tried and failed to ruin his life has been found guilty of extortion, how about we in the media grow up a notch or nine and minimize our coverage of reckless gossip about the personal lives of celebrities - even when it's newsworthy? I double dog dare you.

(Of course, I know it'll never happen; that's not the direction society is moving in nowadays. Ask Tiger Woods about that.)

Slick Rick's Fatal Attraction

Words truly can't express just how little interest I have in modern commercial sports. And when it comes to basketball in particular, I not only don't care about it, I actively harbor some antipathy towards it.

So it would take something pretty wacky to get me to write about Kentucky basketball on here - maybe like if Kyle Macy got a sex change operation, John Calipari was abducted by aliens (if only!), or if Rajan Rondo was proclaimed to be the 974th Living Eck Master.

Well, something almost that weird happened. For those of you who haven't already heard the details too many times to count:

Rick Pitino had sex with a woman in a restaurant - in a restaurant - subsequently gave her three grand for an abortion (even though no proof was offered that the baby was his), then had a secret meeting with her at the apartment of the team’s equipment manager, who would subsequently marry the woman and then divorce her.

Got that so far? Okay. Then:

The woman attempts to shake Pitino down for her silence on the matter for ten million dollars, new cars, and a house. Pitino decides being blackmailed is not such a good idea, and calls the cops on the extortionist instead. (I can imagine her stunned and stammering "w-w-what?? that wasn't supposed to happen!") Flailing in desperation, she tells police that Pitino had actually raped her on not one, but two occasions. Pitino maintains the sex was consensual.

In other words, it's your typical southern trailer-park feud drama, just played out in Brooks Brothers suits and bad Derby hats instead of NASCAR sleeveless t-shirts and Daisy Dukes.


Strangely, some members of the public are holding Pitino up to greater scorn than Sypher, which is puzzling to me. Pitino has led a very successful and productive life in many, many fields besides sports, and to turn on him over a dalliance that occurred years ago and isn't anyone's business anyway, well, that's just petty. Rick Pitino is still a role model and a hero.