Louisville's Rick Pitino Calls Social Media 'Poison': Old School Beliefs Or New School Commentary?
ByMost college coaches are older, which means they're typically old school on certain issues. The 61 year-old Rick Pitino, Louisville's head coach since 2001, fits the first category. Based on his recent comments about social media at press conference on Monday and on the "Mike & Mike" show on Wednesday, he does and does not fit the latter.
"Every hour, it's like taking a little bit of poison," Pitino said during his appearance on Wednesday. "It poisons their minds."
From this first line, Pitino seemed to be going down the direct path to old school, which starts at short shorts, hits the hard shooting foul (no fragrant) and the mid-range jumper, misses the three-point line and ends with something along the lines of, "Twitter, Tweeter, Twacker, I don't know how you pronounce it but I don't like it!"
The slick-dressing Pitino, however, has always seemed more of a modern head coach. He didn't move up the college ranks until settling on one school for the rest of his adult life (or most of it) a la Mike Kryzewski, Bob Knight, Dean Smith, etc. Rather, he was hired young at a big time university (Kentucky, where he won the 1996 national championship, was the 1997 runner-up, and saw the 1998 team win the title the year after he left) before attempting a career in the NBA. That, of course, didn't work out (it rarely did in that era; maybe Celtics coach Brad Stephens will reverse the trend). Pitino returned to college coaching in 2001 with the Cardinals.
Because of his mobility, Pitino would seem to be more sympathetic to social media and its possibilities. In some ways he is -- just not in regards to his players.
"I don't know why people do it," Pitino said at a press conference on Monday. "It's not that I'm against certain facets of social media, because I'm not, but what you're talking about -- what Russ is doing -- is a total waste of time."
What leading scoring Russ Smith is doing is spending four hours per day using social media such as instagram, the same usage rate to which most of his teammates have admitted, according to ESPN.
Instead of Facebook, Twitter, and the lot, Pitino wishes they'd fill their time more productively.
"I'm trying to get our players to read more, pay attention to important things," Pitino said. "We as parents and teachers, we want our children, we want our players to communicate, to articulate a message, to get in front of a human resources person and articulate their passion for wanting a job. We're losing our abilities to communicate, especially young people today."
So yes, Pitino is old-school, but maybe he's also new school in his commentary on social media.