Watch Rick Pitino Go on a Wild, Long-Winded Rant About the Louisville Basketball Escort Scandal

Where did this come from?!

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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It’s usually difficult for reporters to get a lot of sports’ coaches to speak openly at press conferences, especially when you ask them about something controversial. But that was most definitely NOT the case for the reporters who showed up for a press conference with Louisville head coach Rick Pitino today.

Last weekend, Pitino appeared to give a group of Kentucky fans the middle finger following a loss to the Wildcats. He then proceeded to skip his post-game press conference that day. So a reporter opened up the line of questioning today by asking him a simple question: “Did you flip off the UK fans?”

“I did not,” Pitino said, before explaining what happened.

And if he would have stopped there, we probably wouldn’t be covering his press conference right now. But after he got done addressing the middle finger, Pitino moved on and, without being prompted, started talking about the escort scandal that rocked the Louisville basketball program last year. And then, he went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on…and on about it. Seriously, he started talking and didn’t stop for nine whole minutes.

So what did he have to say? In short, Pitino said that he has lost a lot of sleep over the allegations made by an escort and that he still can’t believe people think he was involved with paying women to sleep with recruits. Furthermore, he called out both the NCAA and ESPN—who broke the story about the escort scandal—for not doing a better job investigating it.

We’ve attached a transcript of Pitino's rant, courtesy of WDRB, below. You can also watch the entire press conference in the clip above. What in the world brought all of this on?!

Reporter: Did you flip off the UK fans?

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[via The Big Lead]

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