The times have changed in college basketball and college sports at large. NIL and the transfer portal have reshaped how everything works, significantly reducing how the NCAA worked in the past. These changes prompted the Louisville basketball program to try to reinstate its 2013 national championship. A massive scandal rocked the Cardinals under Rick Pitino, but due to the changes, the program wants this title back.
University of Louisville Athletic Director Josh Heird told Courier-Journal reporter Payton Titus that the University of Louisville Athletics Association wants to talk with the NCAA and reinstate the title. The scandal involved the Louisville basketball program paying strippers to dance for and prostitutes to have sex with players and recruits. Heird argues that this punishment was unheard of and should be reinstated after the amount of changes that have come to college sports.
“The situation, everything surrounding the NCAA, and the landscape in college sports are drastically different,” Heird said. “The recent punishments that were handed down to Michigan (football). There are just several things that we can point at, I think, for us to be able to say, ‘Hey, look, we need to engage in a conversation here about having the opportunity to have this banner up.'”
Since the Louisville basketball program was punished, the N+CAA has only gotten lighter with its punishments. Kansas had to vacate wins, North Carolina barely received a punishment, and then Miami self-imposed a punishment, which minimized what the NCAA would have done. Then, the icing on the cake was that Michigan received a light sentence most recently despite all of the cheating accusations due to Connor Stalions.
Josh Heird last discussed reinstating the national championship in 2022, when the Louisville basketball program responded to sanctions from the 2017 Adidas scandal.
“While I'm not going to sit up here and make any promises, I can tell our fan base unequivocally that if there's an opportunity for us to do something along those lines, we're going to try to do it,” Heird said. “So while that's (the March-April run itself) never going to be taken away from our fans, from our student-athletes that played in that game, to recognize them is important to me. And if there's an avenue to get that done, then that's what we'll try to do.”
Rick Pitino is a lightning rod in college basketball but is widely seen as one of the best coaches the sport has ever had. His last title was with that 2013 team. He is with St. John's now, but that 2013 team made history for him and was loaded with NBA talent.
