His attorney and his bosses and his staff told him to keep quiet and they were absolutely right. Rick Pitino had nothing to gain and some goodwill to lose. But sometimes even the best coaches can’t be coached and so yesterday Pitino held the most bizarre press conference yet in this nightmare that just won’t go away.

Apparently the embattled University of Louisville basketball coach was at home with his wife Joanne, watching the coverage of Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, when the local TV station broke in with the news that Karen Sypher’s interview with the Metro police had been released to the public.

Sypher, of course, is the hopeless bimbo and serial gold-digger who has been indicted for trying to extort $10 million and assorted perks from Pitino in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter that occurred at Porcini’s restaurant in the spring of 2003. He said it was consensual, she claims rape. After listening to her story, the commonwealth’s attorney ruled it had no merit whatsoever.

She also claims she got pregnant by Pitino and that he gave her $3,000 to have an abortion. He says he wasn’t sure the baby was his and gave her the money only for health insurance. So then, a couple of months after the abortion, she marries Pitino’s equipment manager and spends six years on the outskirts of Pitino’s inner circle.

When a man apparently acting on Sypher’s behalf called Pitino for purposes of extortion, the coach turned the matter over to the FBI. And when he learned that Sypher had taped an interview with Fox 41, he decided to make a pre-emptive strike and dump the mess into the public’s lap.

In retrospect, that may have been a hasty decision – just like the one to have yesterday’s press conference. Because it couldn’t corroborate Sypher’s claims, Fox 41 probably would have sat on the story, giving the FBI time to complete its investigation. But once Pitino went public, the story was fair game for every news organization and blogger in the country, including the smarmiest ones.

At the urging of U of L President James Ramsey, Pitino held a news conference last month to apologize for what he termed “my indiscretion.” That satisfied some members of the public and the press, but not all. The critics questioned the depth of Pitino’s contrition. The air waves percolated with arguments about whether he should quit, be fired, take a leave of absence, or simply move on and keep coaching as usual.

Many U of L fans, the knuckleheads who were more concerned about how the scandal would impact recruiting than the human tragedy involved, did some fascinating mental gymnastics to justify Pitino’s decision to stay on the job. The Biblical story about not throwing the first stone was repeated so much on talk radio that it began to sound like an infomercial.

Other fans, bless their hearts, truly believe in forgiveness – and it must be assumed that Pitino, a proud Roman Catholic, has confessed and been forgiven by his church. But others simply don’t care about the moral or ethical issues. All they care about is winning and recruiting and changing the subject to what happened on new Kentucky coach John Calipari’s watch at Memphis.

When Sports Illustrated hit the newsstands last week with a story entitled “How Pitino Is Keeping His Job,” maybe Pitino thought the worst of it was over. No longer was his scandal the lead story on ESPN’s SportsCenter. No longer was it page-one news in and around Louisville.

But then the New York Post came to Kentucky and did the sort of sensationalistic story for which it is known. Yesterday Pitino, after characterizing himself as a “proud New Yorker,” ripped the Post story as “garbage.” He said he hated the fact that his family and friends in New York had to read “a bunch of lies.”

The Post story might have lit the fuse on the ticking bomb that exploded when he saw that local TV station interrupt the Kennedy coverage with news of the Sypher tape. After months of silence except for the press-conference apology, Pitino couldn’t restrain himself. He just had to bring in the media to give them a lecture about their journalistic agenda. He urged his supporters to ignore Sypher stories on TV or in the papers. “Switch the channel,” he said. “Read something else.”

After reminding the media that the FBI and the federal prosecutors “don’t go after jaywalkers,” Pitino left without taking any questions.

He should have listened to his friends and advisors.

Read the Rest After the Jump…

At a time when public opinion is running heavily in Pitino’s favor, he didn’t need to lose his cool. He had no business telling the media what was news and what wasn’t. And just as he shouldn’t have invoked 9/11 in his first press conference, he shouldn’t have drug in Teddy Kennedy yesterday.

As a Catholic with roots in New England, it was understandable that Pitino would be saddened by Kennedy’s death. But as many of Pitino’s critics would be quick to note, the main link between the two now is scandal. Teddy was the last of Joe Kennedy’s sons, the one who was consigned to a career in the U.S. Senate because an “indiscretion” with a woman ruined his Presidential ambitions.

Despite Kennedy’s vast accomplishments on behalf of civil rights and social justice, many Americans never forgave him for the drunken summer night in 1969 when he drove off a bridge in Massachusetts. His only passenger, a young intern named Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned under murky circumstances. For the rest of his life, Kennedy was haunted by that one night of debauchery.

Kennedy is one of many who should have been a cautionary tale for Pitino. Sadly, even unfairly, public figures pay a dearly for their mistakes. But that’s how it is with the double-edged sword known as celebrity. If you’re going to rake in the benefits when things are going well, you also have to accept the consequences when you screw up.

Rather than showing his anger in public, Pitino would be better served if he kept quiet and adopted a cloak of humility. Of course, since Armani doesn’t make anything in sackcloth-and-ashes, that’s tough for him to do.

But contrition would suit him better than defiance. After all, he’s fortunate to still have his job. Under the terms of his contract, U of L President Jim Ramsey and Athletics Director Tom Jurich could have fired him immediately for violating the morals clause.

The thing Pitino must understand is that the story will never die. As long as he’s in the public arena, it always will be there, waiting to bubble to the surface. However Sypher’s extortion trial comes out – and it says here she’ll get time in either prison or a mental hospital – the story won’t die even then.

Fair or not, you can bet that Monica Lewinsky will be mentioned high in Bill Clinton’s obituary. It’s the same with any famous or powerful person who gets caught, literally, with his or her pants down. The media thrives on stuff like this, especially here in the internet age, and while it’s difficult to swallow when you’re the one getting hammered, you must be able to block it out if you are going to do your job effectively.

And that’s really the $64 question, isn’t it? Will Pitino be able to function at his normal high level in the aftermath of the Sypher trial? The story now is as much a part of his bio as the 1996 NCAA title at UK or the fact that he’s the only coach to take three programs to the Final Four. If he hasn’t accepted that – and yesterday’s press conference indicated that he hadn’t – he must. If he’s going to snap at what a local TV station did yesterday, what’s he going to do when rival fans, the media, or protestors bring it up in January, February and March?

Pitino’s skin will have to grow much thicker than it looked yesterday. And he needs to listen to those who care about him the most. Surely there’s something in one of his motivational books about the value of taking good advice.