Raetus

The Manhattan press release basically said he was on leave to work through the degree issue with Kentucky. Maybe he didn't. It will be interesting to hear full story. Seems like Manhattan is giving him a chance. On a related note, my college roommate thought he had graduated from USF. He got his dream job at Dean Witter only to be fired three weeks later when USF said he did not graduate. They had hung him out over some monetary fees, parking I think. He had walked in graduation and everything. Parents, family all were there. After getting fired he paid the fees and became a graduate. Turned out good, he decided to go to law school instead of back to work. This is not the first time that I've heard something like this, which is what made me wonder whether or not he even knew. If he didn't... man... that's gotta feel awful.

"Let's use this as a life lesson! Anyone can leave you at any time. No one loves you. You're not a special snowflake. Watergate. There is no cake. Benghazi. Buzz words. Now. Let's get to work! Guys? Oh come on... I said I'm sorry. What do you mean I didn't? I totally did. Stop being babies."

Spot on.

The only way the relationship isn't over is if it was just some stupid oversight by Kentucky. If that is the case then I could see the two sides still working it out, but otherwise it's done. "Oh? Masiello! Our bad. We thought you said Marsala! Yeah, Masiello's got like... idk... 12 degrees from here. Crazy amount of degrees. Sorry about that." If it turns out to be a Kentucky goof... man... heads will roll somewhere, as they should.

I thought it was handled pretty well. It wasn't mean, reactive, or vindictive... just short and sweet statement of facts worded in a way to absolve USF of any possible wrongdoing if taken at face value. I hope it's a sign of Harlan's touch, as well.

Definitely sucks for us -- I think he would have done well here. If it turns out to be an honest mistake on his part (even if its due to dumb negligence), he'll be fine in the long run. People love a redemption story.

This kinda how I feel. Something doesn't seem right. I don't understand how a guy who is there for four years and makes academic lists wasn't at least near graduation. I'm willing to listen and hear his side of things. There has been enough assumptions, already. If Masiello is willing to give his side of things, I'm more than willing to hear him out.

Joey from the Times just put out USF's statement: https://twitter.com/TBTimes_Bulls "During the search for a new men's basketball coach, an agreement in principle was reached by USF and Steve Masiello. The agreement was pending a verification of credentials. Through the verification process it was determined the candidate's credentials could not be substantiated and therefore he did not meet the requirements for the position. The national search continues and USF looks forward to introducing a new coach at the appropriate time."

All I'm saying is that I've negotiated a few contracts before and if it comes out that an offer was made on contingency so that the candidate would provide the necessary releases to finish the background check, which resulted in information that did not allow them to move forward, then I don't see how anyone can be giving crap to USF or the search firm for the process. You can debate the PR aspects of some of it, but there are literally federal laws that prevent certain aspects of the background check from moving forward without the candidate's assistance. If Masiello lied about his degree, state and university policy requires said degree and the offer was contingent on successful completion of a check, then USF walks out of this scot free.

Bach and 8 years or Masters and 6.

I agree with this -- I'm not going to fault Pitino here. If someone you're that close to tells you that he graduated, then you believe him. Albeit unlikely, there's even a chance that Masiello did something dumb like obtained enough credits, but never applied to graduate and this caught him off guard, which, of course, opens another can of worms in the realm of decision making ability. Either way, it doesn't look great for Masiello, which sucks for him. I just don't think you can fault Pitino for this one.

If it's the latter wherein he was offered the position contingent on a background check, I don't have a problem with it. Keeps him from looking elsewhere and gives the university time to cross their i's and dot their t's. I do have a problem with information being leaked to the media prematurely, though.

Congratulations!

Looks like there may be some weight to this: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=1000-1099/1012/Sections/1012.55.html "Each person employed or occupying a position as school supervisor, school principal, teacher, library media specialist, school counselor, athletic coach, or other position in which the employee serves in an instructional capacity, in any public school of any district of this state shall hold the certificate required by law and by rules of the State Board of Education in fulfilling the requirements of the law for the type of service rendered." I didn't take the time to look up the particular certifications required by the State Board of Education, but it'd be interesting to see.

I can believe it. I don't know if he is telling the truth or not, but I can see how he may not know. I mean, my girlfriend said she has a degree, but it's not like I checked to verify it. She went to classes for a bunch of years, now she says she has graduated, then she took a bunch of my money and went to Europe for a few months and came back. ... at some point, this got away from the task at hand. Anyways, if Pitino and him were as close as they seem to be, then I don't see why he would doubt what Masiello told him; that's just kind of how trust works. If anything, his relationship was a hinderance to finding out this blip.

Should have earned it before they inked a deal, though. Search firm looks sloppy here. While I agree to an extent, Tom Jurich makes a ton of money and is widely regarded as one of the best ADs in the country and he didn't know -- nor did Pitino. While I would have liked it sooner, with how fast these things move, I'm glad they found it before the process got any further. If it weren't for information leaking, we may not have even known about any of this.

Search firm earned their money on this one.

Well, nothing much you can do about that one. If he lied about graduating from UK on his resume, then that's that.

According to these... http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Statutes/statute.aspx?id=19855 http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Statutes/statute.aspx?id=19642 ... it seems that Kentucky classifies Ticket Scalping as a violation, which they define as "an offense, other than a traffic infraction, for which a sentence to a fine only can be imposed."

Agreed on the Derby deal.

I think it's a fair question. If it is indeed over something like a DUI, then this situation (regardless of who is responsible) has publicly embarrassed a candidate. I imagine there would have to be a lot of people questioning whether or not they'd like to subject themselves to such public scrutiny when other schools have shown themselves to have more surreptitious hiring practices. Whoever is leaking information needs to be rooted out.

Kinda agree. Unless he was CEO of Puppy Drowning Inc, I don't really mind. I'll have to reserve judgment as I have no idea what they unearthed, but I can't imagine it was so deplorable that I couldn't excuse it.

If you think what I posted was legal analysis, then I question your former statement, but that's your right. I'll just ignore it and we can both carry on pretending like we have any idea what actually occurred. [Edit] Shortened quotes because they were out of control [/Edit]

There's a silly amount of paperwork that go into some of these negotiations. They could have signed a letter of intent, which would have a caveat of not constituting a legally binding agreement. Dude you gotta stop with the legal analysis. Almost everything you have said in your last few posts has been flat incorrect if not incomplete. Please feel free to enlighten me on what was wrong with that one single sentence. Due the letters of intent that you typically run into serve as legally binding agreements? They don't in my field. I was not referring to this post specifically, although it too is incomplete. Sorry not trying to be a ****, but I am a practicing attorney and your analysis on, for example, legal impossibility was flat wrong. The above post is simply incomplete - as someone noted earlier, if he reasonably relied on a promise he COULD have recourse. Although I will agree with your prior statement that whatever he signed MUST have had a contingency for background check, or USF admin is even more incompetent than we all thought. Again not trying to be a **** just couldn't bite my tongue. Then you're simply arguing semantics and if you're a practicing attorney, you should know that your interpretation of the matter is by no means the be all, end all on the matter. If it was just that easy, we wouldn't even have multiple sides and would just send every case to one guy and ask him to get back to us on his ruling whenever he was done. As I said, he will have his opportunity to sue if he so deems it, but they would have a defense against it. I, at no point, ever said that the defense would be a slam dunk, but that doesn't mean they don't have a valid argument against a claim. It's all speculation at this point as you, myself, the media, and the Internet have no idea what actually happened. Just as you say that he could have a claim, USF could have a defense. Trying to claim that any argument posted here is anything other than incomplete without knowing the facts is absolutely insane.