As we near March Madness, college basketball is about to change forever — and it all starts with Louisville 

We are weeks away from the NCAA anointing a national champion — that could just wind up having its trophy vacated.

The timing of it all is uncanny when you really think about it.


We're in that moment in the sports calendar when college basketball starts to shine. The NFL season is over, and the NBA is just about to come off its break from the All-Star game. This means that on most weeknights, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the country is warming up to the sport that is getting ready to dominate an entire month as we head toward March Madness.

However, this year feels different.

No matter how good Michigan State is doing on the court, it's impossible to ignore the cloud that is hovering over that school and athletic department after the revelation that for decades young girls were being sexually abused by the school's gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, and the numerous allegations of sexual assault by athletes that were ignored.

But while Michigan State is dealing with its own issues, the entire sport seems to be headed toward a hurricane, and Louisville's men's basketball program is in the eye of that storm.

Three national championship banners hang from the rafters at the KFC Yum! Center, the home of the University of Louisville men's basketball team. The 2013 banner will have to come down.
Three national championship banners hang from the rafters at the KFC Yum! Center, the home of the University of Louisville men's basketball team. The 2013 banner will have to come down. (Timothy D. Easley/AP)

On Tuesday, the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee announced that Louisville was going to be the first Division I team in the sport's history to have a national championship (2013) vacated during the Final Four era. The program must also vacate all its wins from 2011-15 and pay back any money it received from appearing in the NCAA Tournament from 2012-15, all due to the sex scandal that took place in 2013, which involved a former director of basketball operations allegedly setting up sex parties where prostitutes were paid to entertain players and lure recruits to the school.

The decision came down after a two-year investigation, which included a self-imposed ban from Louisville for the 2016 ACC and NCAA Tournaments and recruiting sanctions. The school had already accepted four years of probation and scholarship reductions and were hoping that would be enough to keep them from vacating wins and paying back NCAA Tournament shares.

It wasn't.

And a lot of that probably had to do with former head coach Rick Pitino.

The fallout from the sex scandal was only the second strike on Pitino's resume at Louisville. In 2009, Pitino said he was being extorted by the wife of the school's equipment manager after the two had sex six years earlier in a Louisville-area restaurant.

Strike three came just last year and is what ultimately led to Pitino getting fired. Pitino is supposedly the "Coach-2" mentioned in the explosive federal investigation into college basketball corruption, the person who allegedly helped channel money to a recruit.

Authorities are alleging that Adidas executive James Gatto, along with others, were involved with funneling $100,000 to the family of a top recruit, former Louisville freshman Brian Bowen. Bowen is now at the University of South Carolina after he was cleared in the FBI's investigations.

Last year, the Louisville Courier-Journal also reported that Pitino was receiving 98 percent of the money from the 10-year, $160 million deal that Louisville had with Adidas. In 2015-16, Pitino reportedly received $1.5 million under his personal services agreement, while only $25,000 went to the program. The year before that, Pitino received another $1.5 million, while the department only saw $10,000.

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All of this set the scene for the bomb dropped by Yahoo! Sports last week, which indicated that a day of reckoning was on its way for college basketball as the investigation continues.

According to the report, "the impact on the sport will be substantial and relentless." Every major conference is said to be impacted, and so will Hall of Fame coaches and the biggest names and programs in the sport. It is said that as many as 50 college programs could be compromised in the investigation that included 330 days of monitoring by the FBI that collected wiretaps and bank records.


It's that bad right now.

The sad part in this is that the releasing of the FBI's finding could forever change the sport, and all that we love about college basketball.

I understand that rules have been broken, and backroom deals have been made. It's something that's been going on in college athletics for decades.

However, the issue is that this investigation feels like it's going after the bad apples, instead of dealing with the poisonous tree that produced the tarnished fruit.

Fomer Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino
Fomer Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino (Streeter Lecka)

The NCAA and Division I programs across the country make millions off the backs of unpaid teenagers each year, and something tells me that if we had a system that could compensate college basketball and football players in some way, a lot of the filth in college athletics, whether that be with dealing with agents or getting kickbacks from AAU coaches through shoe companies, could be cleaned up.

This season of college basketball is without a dominant team. And when years like this one occur, it usually means we're in store for an exciting NCAA Tournament, because anybody can win it.

But with the FBI investigation acting as the elephant in the room, I caution everyone who fills out a bracket next month to do it in pencil — because the way this thing is starting to feel, the sport of college basketball as we know it, seems like it's about to get erased.