Rick Pitino is the current basketball coach for the University of Louisville (formerly coach for the Boston Celtics and University of Kentucky) and a couple of years ago he apparently had a short-lived (1night stand by his report, twice by hers) fling with another woman. The affair may not be headline news exactly because it seems to be a more common occurrence throughout the celebrity world, except that Pitino's been a pretty clean cookie but he is a fairly well known & well respected basketball coach who is a staunch Roman Catholic, married and a father of 5. There's also controversy about certain clauses in his contract w/ U of L that include dishonesty and moral depravity as grounds for termination. So, not only is he dealing w/ the blow to his family, religion, reputation and possibly his career, the other woman has allegedly attempted to extort money from the coach (reports vary from a few thousands to $10 million - nothing official has been confirmed thus far). There's a whole secondary scandal about whether or not he paid her $3000 for an abortion as she claims or for health insurance costs as he claims, oh, and sometime after the "affair" she married the Pitino's team equipment manager. So...that's what all the hoopla's about.
Personally, I liked Pitino bc I'm a Wildcats fan & he's a great coach. To me, if the indiscretions can be overcome between him & the wife, then that's his business & private life. If he's crazy enough to sign a contract wherein he's agreed to terms that mishavior that brings bad press/tainted rep to the school, then he's subject to those terms. Does it make him a bad coach, no of course. Was it wrong? Of course. It's also wrong that she's trying to extort money from him for an incident in which she participated with full consent. Two people - two stupid mistakes and it's being tried in the media. Tell her to keep her grubby hands to herself, tell him to face his wife & children - tell them both they've painted themselves into a corner, but they've got to deal w/ the unpretty consequences themselves. Next story please.