Over the weekend, ESPN’s Outside the Lines detailed how Tom Jurich took the University of Louisville from mediocrity to the top of college athletics.
Here’s an excerpt:
The athletic department’s unfettered growth was undented by the scandals that occurred under Jurich’s watch. Jurich refused to fire Pitino despite a string of public embarrassments, including Pitino’s affair with a woman who was later sent to prison for trying to extort him, and “Strippergate,” in which a Pitino assistant coach, over a period of four years, brought in dancers and prostitutes to entertain recruits at a university dorm. Louisville is appealing NCAA sanctions for Strippergate and if denied will be stripped of 123 wins, including its 2013 national title. In 2013, Jurich retained a former assistant football coach, even after the NCAA had sanctioned the coach for receiving and handing out thousands of dollars while at the University of Miami. In 2014, with Louisville about to join the ACC, Jurich brought back Bobby Petrino as football coach after he had been fired by Arkansas for lying about his own affair with a 25-year-old assistant.
“I looked at each situation the best way I possibly could,” Jurich says.
Jurich sought to neutralize the scandals and shape the athletic department’s image by controlling the local media, according to interviews with more than half a dozen journalists and media executives — many of whom requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals from Louisville, even with Jurich gone. They described consistent and aggressive efforts to influence coverage, including abusive calls to radio talk-show hosts and executives by Jurich and his surrogates; threats to get advertising pulled from stations; and attempts to influence hiring and firing. Jurich denies he sought to influence advertisers or pressure the media. Nearly all of the media members identified Bob Gunnell, a public relations specialist, as Jurich’s main surrogate and attack dog. The Louisville athletic department has a sports information group that employs 11 people, but contracts obtained by Outside the Lines show Jurich paid Gunnell’s outside PR firm, Boxcar, up to $130,000 per year dating to 2014. Shortly after Jurich was fired, Gunnell cut ties with the university. He now represents Jurich personally.
This year Jones, the well-connected host of Kentucky Sports Radio, told his audience he had heard Jurich’s job was in jeopardy. Jones later said on Periscope that Boxcar pressured his bosses to retract the report and issue an on-air apology. Jones, facing a suspension, initially refused and says he agreed to apologize only because he was scheduled to broadcast from an event the next day and some listeners were traveling long distances to attend. But he extracted a promise: When he was proved right, he could go on the air and say his bosses had ordered him to lie.
When Jurich was fired, Jones did just that, telling his listeners: “My bosses forced me to go on the air and lie to people.”
Gunnell says his role was to assist the university’s sports information office and review media rights proposals. “I wasn’t Tom’s attack dog,” he says. Gunnell says he does not believe that he pressured Jones’ bosses to issue a retraction.
What a horrible look for Tom Jurich. Even now he still doesn’t get it. Taking shots at professors because they can’t raise money for their departments like he did? Get outta here. https://t.co/30Y5vgZlz5
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) December 10, 2017
