Rick Pitino was not on the Louisville campus Tuesday to denounce the 2013 NCAA championship banner coming down, or the vacated wins, or the hundreds of thousands of dollars the school must pay for a sex scandal that involved prostitutes, strippers, recruits and players.
Though he has been gone for months, the NCAA's decision to uphold the penalties handed down by the Committee on Infractions comes one step closer to closing the sordid, scandalous chapter that Pitino authored as Louisville basketball coach.
There can be no other way to view his 16 years with the Cardinals, no matter how vehemently both he and his defenders scream he has been vilified and misjudged.