Pitino paid $3K for Karen Syphers to have an abortion in 2003.

Sorry to throw a jab at ESPN’s resident Bluegrass reporter, but it seems too easy. You wonder if he knew about this, you know?

You also wonder if the sitaution was related to Calipari, if Forde would’ve searched through every manilla folder — twice — to find anything and everything on the subject.

But the story and woman who won’t leave Rick Pitino’s life has reached an apex, you’d guess, tonight. I mean, it can’t get worse than this, right?

It appears Pitino had some drunken hook-up with the legitimately kooky Karen Sypher back in August of 2003. (This is starting to read like a New York Post story, but the details are that tabboo, I suppose.) In the Internet age, it appears almost anything post 1995 is timeless. Pitino cannot sweep this away (nor should it be) and he’ll be battling a PR nightmare for the greater part of the next six months. Some think he’s flirting with losing his job, but I don’t think so; his track record on the floor and the new boy coaching down the street mean more than a personal/family problem that’s not against the law.

In the grand scheme of Sypher’s nutso plan this isn’t even the big stuff; she has been proven wrong on her accounts of being raped by Pitino and her attempt to extort it has publicly backfired).

Sgt. Andy Abbott said in an investigative summary that Sypher failed, for example, to disclose that another person was at Porcini Restaurant when she said the first incident occurred.

That witness, Vinny Tatum, an executive assistant to Pitino, told the FBI that he didn’t see what happened but heard “only the sounds of two people that seemed to be enjoying themselves during a sexual encounter,” according to Abbott’s report.

Abbott said records also indicate that Pitino was in California when Sypher claimed he sexually assaulted her a second time.

Pitino now only has one way to “win” this. That’s by coming forward, offering as many I’m sorry’s as possible and taking the brunt of this head on until the stink washes away. Still, knowing Pitino (which, I don’t), I’m guessing he’ll deflect, deflect, deflect. Remember, the case is still going to trial, so the wall of lawyers will have him zip-lipped until then, at least. There is no court date set as of yet.

I don’t think his job is in jeopardy— the president of UL’s statement doesn’t seem to indicate that — but hiding from this will only make things shadier and worse for him and the team (can’t wait to see those Big East games on ESPN!) in opposing teams’ arenas in 2009-10.

Pitino told police he had consensual sex with Sypher {Louisville Courier-Journal}