Sullivan | Lee, Lewis embody enforcement injustice
Damion Lee walked onto the floor wearing multiple layers and long pants, but hearing the cheers: “I had chills.”
Trey Lewis walked off the floor with 2:06 remaining to an ovation that could have roused Rip Van Winkle, but later asked that people stop feeling sorry for him.
The two most compelling victims of the University of Louisville’s calculated decision to self-impose postseason sanctions returned to the KFC Yum! Center Saturday afternoon as favorite sons who had come, overnight, to embody injustice. Though they had played no part in the sex scandal that has rocked U of L’s basketball program, Lee and Lewis have been forced to pay a steep price as innocents who arrived after the fact.
Denied a last shot at an NCAA tournament, the two graduate transfer guards will end their college careers as martyrs to a system in which punishment does not always fit the crime and rarely reaches the real criminals. Yet while multiple petition drives sparked by their plight are unlikely to cause University President James Ramsey to reconsider his decision, Cardinals’ coach Rick Pitino’s new initiative is to see that the dreams of Lee and Lewis did not die in vain.
Pitino defends Ramsey: 'The system is broken'
“There must be a price to pay for that behavior, certainly,” Pitino said of U of L’s infractions following Saturday’s 79-47 blowout of Boston College. “But this team shouldn’t pay that price, unfortunately. ...
“It’s not going to save the University of Louisville, but something should change when the people are not involved. They should not pay the penalty. I believe that we should get hit with a heavy, heavy financial fine that puts us where we’ve got to go out and fundraise to make up for it and do anything possible. I believe that’s what should be done. We should be hit with a $10-15 million dollar fine and that’s it – unless somebody was involved.”
Since U of L announced its postseason ban Friday without identifying any specific transgressions, and since its in-house investigation and that of the NCAA are still incomplete, it would be premature to absolve all members of the current U of L team for the recruiting irregularities described in Katina Powell’s book, “Breaking Cardinal Rules.” Given the unwieldy nature of NCAA investigations, there’s no guarantee that the scope of Louisville’s liability will be limited to the hiring of strippers and prostitutes at Billy Minardi Hall.
Yet if Ramsey correctly calculated that self-imposing a tournament ban for this year might mitigate NCAA sanctions later on, it’s a clumsy and callous enterprise that creates so much collateral damage for so many blameless athletes. If the NCAA is sincere in its stated desire to improve the lot of the students who generate billions of dollars for a business that does not pay them a salary, it should take a hard look at penalties that punish perpetrators, administrators and institutions more than bystanders.
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College athletics needs some sort of penalty structure to deter cheating and maintain order, but its Committee on Infractions tends to detonate neutron bombs when circumstances call for narrower targets. Punishing college athletes for infractions committed by their predecessors is like prosecuting a man for the crimes of his grandfather: unfair, unjust and unworthy of an advanced civilization.
Those athletes who are not directly implicated in an infractions case should be able to transfer immediately with no loss of eligibility before any sanctions are imposed by the school or by the NCAA. Those coaches and athletes responsible for major infractions should expect to face civil lawsuits even if they escape NCAA jurisdiction and/or criminal prosecution. Those athletes who follow the rules should not be punished for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I don’t want people feeling sorry for me anymore because I felt sorry for myself, (and) I got that over with,” Trey Lewis said Saturday. “I’m just trying to enjoy each moment I have left. I’ve got eight games of college basketball. I’m trying to make the most out of each one.”
Told of the petition drives urging Ramsey to reconsider U of L’s postseason ban, Lewis asked for the name of the web site. (Change.org)
“Everybody go in there and try to change this ban,” he said. “Cause we want to play in the tournament.”
Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com or @TimSullivan714.