I'm not sure how to feel about the Rick Pitino sex scandal.
A guy that I always liked since his days with the first Knicks' team I ever followed in my childhood (the 1988-89 Atlantic Division Champs) turned out to be a sleaze. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Without getting into the rammifications of what Pitino did, this fiasco is a perfect example of how much things have changed for coaches in collegiate sports.
40, 30, even 20 years ago, college coaches hardly got a fraction of the public attention that they get now. Sure, guys like John Wooden, Bob Knight, and Woody Hayes were psuedo-celebrities, but a vast majority of college coaches weren't well known nationally.
Nowadays, not only is every coach living in the public eye, from Greg McMackin of Hawaii to Urban Meyer of Florida, but many of these coaches have become institutions at the school that they coach. Suddenly, Rick Pitino's actions are not only a representation himself, but the entire University of Louisville.
I'm not saying that's fair or unfair, but that's the reality of this Twitter-happy, Rivals.com, billion-dollar TV contract world of big-time college sports that we live in right now.
So much for the good old days.
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