Coach Pitino Shares His Strong Opinion On Conference Realignment

Rick Pitino met with the media this afternoon to preview the Battle 4 Atlantis, but as you can expect the conversation quickly shifted to the conference realignment news that has dominated the headlines in the past 48 hours. As you can expect, Coach Pitino didn’t shy away from sharing his opinion on the whole thing.

Here is a video of Coach Pitino’s comments courtesy of Courier-Journal.com Click here to view from your mobile device

“I want to coach in the Big East forever, but if I’m the ACC, I’d want Louisville to be the first school I’d even think about.”

“I haven’t come across a school like this in long time with so much to offer and so little interest; the SEC, ACC, and Big Ten should be after us. To me, Louisville is a hidden gem in college athletics.”

“We’ve got to figure out who wants in, who wants out. Get your divorce papers ready or make this marriage work.”

“The danger of it all is that the catholic schools don’t just get fed up with this and say, you know what, we’ve got a great basketball league, let’s just have a great basketball league, you football people do what you want.”

“If I’m the Big East, I do everything humanly possible to keep Louisville.”

“With basketball we’re maxed out financially”, Pitino said. “We made 44 million dollars last year, that is more than the Packers.”

“Louisville attracts a lot of attention, its big time in football,” says Pitino. “When these freshman and sophomore are juniors and seniors this team can line up with anyone in the country, and we’ve got next year’s Heisman trophy winner.”