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Louisville's response to its Wake Forest scandal is simply astounding
Suppose you and I are in a class together. The night before an exam, I obtain some of the questions that will appear on the test. I offer you a copy, and you take them.
I think we would both agree — that's cheating.
But now, suppose we show up the next day and it turns out those questions are no longer on the test. The teacher caught wind that something nefarious was afoot and revised it. As a result, we don't get to use our intel.
Did we no longer cheat?
Of course we did.
But don’t tell that to Louisville AD Tom Jurich.
Tom Jurich and Bobby Petrino
(Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
A day after Wake Forest’s bombshell on Tuesday that a former Demon Deacons player and coach-turned-radio analyst had leaked game plan materials to Louisville and other opponents, Jurich released a statement describing what happened on his team’s end prior to the teams’ Nov. 12 meeting.
As suspected, Wake Forest mole Tommy Elrod reached out to his former Wake Forest coaching colleague Lonnie Galloway, now offensive coordinator at Louisville. Per Jurich, Elrod passed along a few "special" Deacons plays. Galloway promptly passed them along to Louisville’s defensive staff.
Boom. Caught red-handed.
But just when you got to the part where Jurich would undoubtedly announce some form of suspension/reprimand — or at the very least apologize to Wake Forest — he instead closed with this:
"I'm disappointed that this issue has brought undue attention to our football staff as we prepare for our upcoming bowl game."
Tom Jurich and Rick Pitino
(Jamie Rhodes/USA TODAY Sports)
Either Jurich believes if the other team doesn’t run the plays you nefariously obtained ahead of time it doesn’t count as cheating, or, "You’re damn right we cheated. So what? Go away."
It’s an astounding response, but hardly out of character for Jurich, a highly accomplished AD who just happens to lack even a remote moral compass. When he rehired the ethically challenged Bobby Petrino in 2014, I wrote at the time: "Now we're getting a better window into why Jurich's teams win so much. He apparently cares about nothing else."
And that was more than a year before we found out Louisville’s basketball program had allegedly been hiring prostitutes to entertain its basketball recruits — a scandal that cost the Cardinals an NCAA tourney berth last year but affected neither the jobs of Jurich or coach Rick Pitino. Jurich has adamantly stood by Pitino, who himself adamantly insists he had no idea a former staffer of his was hosting seedy recruiting parties.
Right. Just like football counterpart Petrino swears he had no idea half his coaching staff had copies of Wake Forest’s plays.
Nothing to see here. Please disperse.
#WakeyLeaks does present some fascinating ethical questions. In fact, I can’t honestly say I fault Galloway much in this. Coaches are always looking for even the slightest advantage they can find to win a football game. They steal signals. They deploy GAs and interns to scour opponents’ message boards for injury rumors. If they could fly a drone over the other team’s practice field, they would.
If somebody gift-wrapped a tip like Elrod did, most coaches would be hard-pressed to turn it down.
BUT ... they would do so knowing there will be surely consequences if they’re caught.
Unless, of course, their boss is Tom Jurich. In which case he’ll not only let it slide but chide people for having the audacity to bother you during bowl prep.
My guess is Louisville is not out of the woods here. The ACC has said it’s obtained the information from Wake Forest’s internal investigation and will "perform its due diligence."
"Protecting competitive integrity," said the statement, "is fundamental to the Atlantic Coast Conference."
Uh oh. Did anyone tell Jurich that part about integrity when it invited Louisville to join the conference three years ago? If so, he hasn’t gotten the message.
