NCAA Allegations Suggest Louisville Will Be Largely Unpunished for Sex Scandal

The NCAA released its notice of allegations to the University of Louisville on Thursday, and the result was the opposite of a "got ya" moment.

Nothing new surfaced in the NCAA's investigation of the program. The man with the ability to make things much worse for Rick Pitino and his program, former basketball staffer Andre McGee, stayed silent.

As a result, the NOA is 20 pages of nothing to see here. Time to move on.

This was the best outcome for Louisville after the unseemly behavior was brought to light last fall.

Joe Raymond/Associated Press

What was established is what we already knew: McGee, per the NOA, "arranged for and/or provided impermissible inducements, offers and/or extra benefits in the form of adult entertainment, sex acts and/or cash" to at least 17 recruits or current players, two grassroots coaches and one friend of a recruit at the Louisville basketball dorm.

The cost of such business, the NCAA found, was $5,400.

Reasonable minds could conclude that McGee, who held low-level positions in the pecking order of the basketball program, could not have acted alone in organizing such parties. The money had to come from somewhere.

But suspicion is not enough to convict. The NCAA has no power to make McGee speak. And thus, the Cardinals are in the clear.

Pitino, it seems, will get past the sordid affair without any significant punishment or damage to his legacy. He will likely have to sit out some unimportant games in the 2017-18 season for what the NCAA called "not properly monitoring" McGee. All the NCAA could establish, similar to the cases of Syracuse's Jim Boeheim and former SMU coach Larry Brown, was that Pitino was in the dark, and his punishment should follow suit. 

Unless someone else comes forward with damning information, his likely brief suspension is all that is left of this story. 

From a damage control aspect, Louisville did what it needed to in order to avoid a significant penalty. In February, Louisville self-imposed a postseason ban after its own investigation proved there was some truth to the allegations in Katina Powell's book that had been released the previous October.

This was not fair to some of the players on that team, particularly Damion Lee and Trey Lewis, grad-transfer seniors who were uninvolved in the scandal. But it was the best option for the interest of Louisville's basketball program going forward. Had the postseason ban been imposed in the 2016-17 season or thereafter, the program would have risked losing players and/or recruits.

That move was cruel to some but calculated and smart.

Robert Franklin/Associated Press

Now that the NCAA could not prove Pitino or any other heavy hitters were involved, the only real hit to the Cardinals is some bad PR. 

This isn't Moses Scurry, Anderson Hunt and David Butler in a hot tub with Richie "The Fixer" Perry. That turned out much worse for UNLV. 

Louisville will continue to be one of the best programs in college basketball. Pitino will continue to be one of the best coaches. He will likely win many more games and go out on his terms.

The worst appears to be behind Pitino and the Cardinals. And, somehow, it never really got that bad.

C.J. Moore covers college basketball and football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @CJMooreBR.