Rick Pitino Has an Agent and Is Looking for a Coaching Job
That didn't take long. Actually, and ironically, it took nearly the length of an entire college basketball season.
Someone most people thought would be, henceforth, unemployable is hot on the trail of once again being employed.
Rick Pitino has hired an agent and wants back in coaching.
I was being facetious in that second paragraph. I never, for one second, thought Rick Pitino would roll over after being fired by the University of Louisville.
He's not the type.
I'm a long-time college basketball fan. I watched the 1987 NCAA Tournament and saw this hungry 34-year-old coaching genius thoroughly maximize the newly-created three-point line and use it to take somewhat tiny Providence College all the way to the Final Four.
I saw how he coached Kentucky.
Meticulous. Driven. Impatient with anything less than perfection. Ambitious. Gears turning trying to figure how to re-re-re-invent the wheel.
He paces the sidelines like a nervous panther.
He doesn't sit still. He was NEVER going to sit still. I never believed him for a second when he said, "I'm finished in this business. I really am."
And, just like that, he's baaaaaack.
If he ever was away, that is.
The Louisville Courier-Journal even hints at the University of Pittsburgh, which just fired Kevin Stallings after two disastrous seasons.
Now, I don't know if Pitt will jump at the chance to hire THIS particular Hall-of-Famer with two national titles--uh, make that ONE, I guess--under his belt. But that proud program is kind of desperate right now, so who knows?
And, honestly, I don't believe the world will be Pitino's oyster here. I think there are a LOT of schools who just think it was all too much and won't go near him.
OR, they know he'll win immediately, he won't go anywhere else and make THEIR school his retirement gig, and they'll hold their nose and hire him and hope for the best.
And they just might get it.
I have to confess to being deeply intrigued by how this is going to play out.
Pitino wants to coach again...and very BADLY, it seems.
Who's gonna bite?