The back flap of the cover of Rick Pitino’s best selling book from the late 1990’s says, “Success Is a Choice is for anyone who is serious about making dreams a reality. It’s a tool for preparing yourself for the challenges you face from developing habits and discipline that will get you started down the path to success….”

Pitino’s book is a Bible for wealth and fame seekers. The book offers 10 steps to be an overachiever.

One would have to think Coach Pitino knows the 10 steps he wrote about in the book by heart. Surely, he read the book from cover to cover countless times to perfect the speeches he has given to numerous Fortune 500 companies and other success seekers.

After the last couple weeks, Step 9 is the obvious choice for Pitino’s most treasured chapter in the book.

Step 9 is titled “Learn from Adversity” and that is what Coach Pitino is doing this very moment.

One of the headings in the chapter says, “Accept Responsibility for Your Actions.” It starts like this: “To begin, let’s talk about situations in which we experience personal or professional failures….”

Do you think he knew the déjà vu Step 9 would bring him in 2009?

Rick Pitino is the coach of a major DI basketball program, Louisville. He has been considered a role model for professionals all over the United States.

He made a choice, a very bad choice to engage in sexual intercourse with a stranger in 2003 in an upscale Louisville restaurant on a tabletop.

Did Pitino think at the time that he was overachieving?

According to Pitino, overachieving comes from communicating effectively.

Step 5 in the book says to “Master the Art of Communication.”

One could sum up his experience at the restaurant from reading a couple of the headings in Step 5.

“Sometimes You Have to Ignore Your Own Agenda,” and “Real Passion Makes Communication Easy.”

Yes it does coach. Or it did, as you finished off an expensive meal with a more expensive dessert!

Pitino paid $3000 to his new friend, Karen Cunagin, two weeks later at the residence of his then strength coach Tim Sypher. The money was for an abortion that resulted from the encounter he had at the restaurant.

One of the other headers from Step 5, “Confront Problems Immediately,” must mean to kill the problem in a hurry.

Anti-abortion activists think this should cost him his job at Louisville in 2009.

He is a self-proclaimed practicing catholic, which would make is decision to abort his future offspring another bad choice in their eyes.

The whole incident doesn’t seem to bother University of Louisville president James Ramsey.

Ramsey was quoted as saying that the basketball coach is “our guy” and that he believes the school will become stronger following Pitino’s expression of remorse on Wednesday.

Way to hold your famous coach accountable to the morals clause in his contract!

A line on page 252 in his book may sum this up, “Enjoy the moment- then move on.”

Ramsey must have also read Step 9 as another heading in the chapter states, “A Good Loser Will Become a Winner!”

Pitino is Good!

He has many people making him out to be a victim from the whole incident.

Does anyone else find this disturbing?

There is yet another allegation that says Pitino may have paid his friend Tim Sypher to marry Karen Sypher to keep her quiet.

Sounds like a lot of remorse took place prior to him getting caught.

The front flap of the cover of his famous best seller says this, “Do you want to be a better spouse or parent?(Pitino is married with 5 boys) Pitino shows you how communication and role models can help. Do you want to get more personal satisfaction out of life? Pitino explains how stress and adversity can be turned to your advantage.”

No doubt Coach Rick Pitino is a master of turning the tables on his adversaries or in this case throwing one onto a table and walking away unharmed.

After all, “Restaurant Sex is a Choice.”

Wait, maybe this is what the title of his book should have been!

photo:AP

sources: ESPN.com, AP, New York Post