'Long process' awaits U of L hoops and NCAA

As quickly as developments have followed since the University of Louisville drew up a contract for a private investigator and notified the NCAA after meeting with the authors of a new book filled with major allegations against the school’s basketball program, there is still a long, long road ahead for everyone involved.

“We might be having a conversation a year from now and still not have answers,” said David Ridpath, a sports administration professor at Ohio University and an expert on NCAA compliance and investigations.

Why would an investigation into such a high-profile case, one with high stakes and even potential criminal elements to it, take so long?

Because even though the allegations laid out in “Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen” are out there for all to see, each investigating entity – U of L's private investigator, former NCAA enforcement staffer Chuck Smrt and the NCAA – must conduct scores of interviews, mine computer and phone data and review school documents.

That process requires time – and lots of money. Public records show U of L is paying Smrt $235 an hour for his services, and that hourly rate is actually considered low by several lawyers and compliance experts interviewed by The Courier-Journal.

If Smrt, whose agreement with U of L was effective Sept. 1, worked 40 hours a week – a conservative estimate considering how much he has to do – the university’s bill would already be north of $56,000 just for his services.

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U of L also agreed to pay $200 an hour to any other staff member from Smrt’s company, The Compliance Group, for their help. Those fees don’t include another $95 an hour for “transcript and report preparation and research services,” according to The Compliance Group’s contract with U of L, or the presumably higher cost of retaining the law firm Stites & Harbison for what U of L spokesman John Karman called “legal services related to the review of allegations” against the basketball program.

Of course, none of the costs above include any potential travel accommodations for Smrt and his team if they travel anywhere to conduct interviews.

But money is only one of the many challenges facing Smrt, U of L's compliance office and the NCAA’s enforcement staff. They are now tasked with tracking down not only the current and former players in the book, many of whom are out of college now and are under no obligation to be interviewed, but also other players, coaches, staffers and others who were around U of L’s basketball program during the years the book’s illicit activities allegedly occurred.

U of L coach Rick Pitino says he has encouraged former coaches, players or support staffers to speak freely and honestly with Smrt if he asks to interview them about the allegations.

Katina Powell, the book’s coauthor and a self-described escort, claims former U of L director of basketball operations Andre McGee paid her and other escorts, including her teenage daughters, thousands of dollars and gave them game tickets in exchange for them dancing for and having sex with Louisville players and recruits. These activities, Powell says, took place over the course of four years, from 2010-14.

In that time span, Louisville basketball had 11 assistant coaches and 42 players pass through the program, and that doesn’t include student managers, program assistants, video coordinators and several others who were a part of the program in some fashion.

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There are many high school basketball recruits who were pursued by Louisville but chose other schools. Each has parents, relatives, coaches and guardians who were part of the process. There are employees from the hotels where Powell alleges she and other escorts met with recruits, and in some cases their fathers, when they were in Louisville.

There are security guards, employed through a private security company contracted to run the front desk for EdR, the dorm management company in charge of U of L’s Minardi Hall, the basketball residential hall where Powell claims many of the alleged parties took place. There are resident’s assistants from Minardi Hall, too.

And then there is Powell and the other escorts she mentions in the book.

That’s not to say every single person in the aforementioned categories will be interviewed by Smrt or the NCAA, but it does show just how many people could have witnessed – or not witnessed – the alleged activities, or at least some version of them.

The easiest interviews for the NCAA to procure will be any student-athletes or coaches still under the NCAA “umbrella,” said a former NCAA enforcement staffer who did not wish to be identified in order to freely speak about a former employer.

“Any of them, under that umbrella, is required to cooperate in an investigation,” the former NCAA staffer said. “His or her eligibility could be impacted. It’s not as heavy-handed as ‘hanging their eligibility over them,’ but there could be ramifications for lying or not cooperating.”

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But these interviews, which can be tedious and lengthy, are only part of the process. The ex-NCAA staffer said the investigators can comb through the records of university-issued phones and email accounts.

“The NCAA relies very heavily on phone records – calls, text messages,” the ex-staffer said. “They are looking for patterns of contact. They might not find the smoking gun, but they may ask, ‘What the heck are you doing talking to them in the first place?’”

Louisville’s case is rare in that the NCAA has reportedly started conducting its own interviews with former U of L recruits while Smrt’s inquiry into the allegations is still ongoing. Typically, Ridpath said, schools conduct their own investigations and submit what they find to the NCAA. Then the NCAA will ask questions about the school’s report, a back-and-forth that can take weeks, like it did in former Louisville freshman Shaqquan Aaron’s eligibility case last fall.

If there is enough evidence of potential wrongdoing, the NCAA will send the school a notice of allegations, which details which rules the school is alleged to have broken. That could eventually lead to a meeting between U of L and the NCAA’s committee on infractions, the body that “actually adjudicates this,” the former NCAA staffer said. The committee on infractions ultimately determines sanctions.

“What (Smrt) needs to do is see if there's any evidence,” Ridpath said. “Witnesses, interviews, video logs, logbooks – NCAA investigators like when a lot of their legwork is done.”

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One issue, though, is the firm managing Minardi Hall auto-deletes its security video footage after 60-90 days and keeps each logbook for six months.

Another issue: One student at U of L who has spent time in Minardi Hall said a sign-in was never required despite entering the front door each time. Powell claims in her book that she and the other escorts often entered the building through side doors, and if they came through the front, they were never required to sign anything.

Examples like that show the difficulty Smrt faces as he tries to, as Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said last Friday, “get to the bottom of this.”

“The tough part now for Louisville is (the release of the book) turns the burden of proof on them, and that’s not how it usually is,” Ridpath said. “They need to be as open and transparent on this as possible. In this day and age, there's no way this information isn't going to come out. … This is going to be a long process, and why that, for lack of a better term, sucks, is that it hangs over your head. Regardless of the allegations, this is a dark cloud over the program that isn’t going away any time soon.”