Book claims U of L arranged for prostitutes
The University of Louisville’s powerhouse basketball program was rocked on Friday by salacious allegations in a new book that claims a former staff member paid escorts thousands of dollars to have sexual relations with players and recruits.
The book, titled “Breaking Cardinal Rules,” which is set to be released in the coming days, was penned by a Louisville-based escort, Katina Powell.
In it, Powell, who could not be reached for comment on Friday, alleges that former U of L player, graduate assistant and director of basketball operations Andre McGee “paid an escort service for four years to provide sex to teenage recruits to help woo the players to join the Cardinals team,” according to a release from the book’s publisher, the Indianapolis Business Journal Publishing LLC.
The IBJ said the book is “based on hundreds of journal entries and thousands of text messages kept by the head of the escort service.” Powell wrote the book with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dick Cady.
Informed of the book in late August, U of L hired private investigator Chuck Smrt, a Kansas-based compliance expert who has worked with scores of universities and their athletics programs, to conduct an inquiry into Powell’s explosive allegations. U of L athletic director Tom Jurich said Smrt has also been in touch with the NCAA, and that the university contacted the NCAA itself when the publishers approached U of L about the book.
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Both Jurich and U of L basketball coach Rick Pitino said former Louisville players have been contacted by both the book’s authors and by Smrt. The university also provided the logbooks for Minardi Hall, the U of L dormitory where basketball players live, to Smrt and the NCAA, Jurich said.
Smrt and an NCAA spokesperson both said they would not comment on an ongoing investigation.
“We're still trying to uncover the facts,” Jurich said. “We want to get to the bottom of this as much as anybody, as much as our fan base does, as much as our university and our community does, and we will.”
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McGee, now an assistant coach at University of Missouri at Kansas City, which is scheduled to play at Louisville in December, has been placed on administrative leave by the school.
His lawyer, Louisville-based attorney Scott Cox, said that while McGee knew Powell, he denied the allegations in the book. Cox said he and his firm hired retired FBI agents to investigate the claims in the book, and that they haven’t seen “anything yet to corroborate the allegations in this book.”
“Andre McGee has cooperated at every stage of this investigation,” Cox said. “He loves the University of Louisville and would not do anything to hurt the image of the university.”
IU: We're not involved in Louisville escort scandal
Friday’s news of Powell’s alleged involvement with players, recruits and, in some cases, their fathers, shocked several former Louisville basketball players and their families. Reached by phone or via social media, three players and one player’s father said it was the first they’d heard of escorts coming to parties at U of L and interacting with players.
Ex-Louisville center Gorgui Dieng, who won a national championship with the Cardinals in 2013, told a reporter from The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis that he was “not aware” of the story or any of the activities detailed in the book.
Pitino said he began his own investigation into the book’s allegations before the university’s compliance department asked him to stop.
The Hall of Fame coach said he spoke with 12 former assistants who worked at U of L between the 2010-14 period mentioned in the book, plus several video and support staffers.
He also heard from former Louisville forward Kyle Kuric, who told the coach he had been contacted by the book’s authors.
“When this first broke a month ago, I questioned everybody if anybody has even a little knowledge or hearsay or seen anybody, and everybody, to the person, 15 people, said they had no knowledge of anything, never seen anything,” Pitino said.
An IBJ news release promoting the book says Powell has “hundreds of text exchanges” with McGee, as well as pictures of her escorts with players and recruits.
Yahoo Sports, which obtained an advance copy of the book, reported that Powell claimed she and McGee exchanged more than $10,000 for her and her escorts’ services.
“I felt like I was part of the recruitment team. A lot of them players went to Louisville because of me,” Powell said in the book, according to the IBJ’s story.
Jurich said the university first became aware of the book and the allegations when Indiana University deputy director of athletics Scott Dolson contacted U of L senior associate AD Kevin Miller.
Dolson asked Miller if he could help an IU booster, Michael Maurer, after whom IU’s law school is named, identify a player in a photo. Maurer later explained to Dolson, Miller and U of L spokesman Kenny Klein that the photo was for a book that “will not be favorable to the U of L image.”
Maurer is the chairman of the IBJ Corp., but he told the Indianapolis Star that him contacting U of L about the photo or publishing the book had nothing to do with his support of IU.
“To say that I was motivated by being a big fan of Indiana is total lunacy,” Maurer told The Star.
When a reporter on Friday stated Pitino, on the eve of his team’s first Red-White scrimmage of the 2015-16 season, denied the allegations in the book, the coach quickly corrected them.
“I didn’t say that,” Pitino said.
“I’m heartbroken that this, under my watch, could even — anything like this could have happened,” he continued.
“How can over 20 people be involved? Look, we’re heavily involved in this program. We’re in here at 6, 6:15 in the morning, and we go late at night. … Not one of us has ever heard anything of being out with the wrong people, so that bothers me. I can’t say what’s true and not true, because we’re investigating.”