Sorry if this doesn't go over well but truth is:
For the record I can't stand the immoral, arrogant ass that is Rick Pitino (and I usually try not to pass judgement like that)
You're missing the big fish here...it's the vacating of wins; much bigger than a simple hand slap.
1. Pearl got punished for lying. That's a big no-no with NCAA.
2. The hookers were provide by Andre McGhee, asst coach who set up the parties and passed out cash to recruits
3. Pitino got failure to monitor as he claimed ignorance and most likely either didn't know or turned a blind eye...but either is tough to prove - thus failure to monitor at the very least.
4. Have to pay back ALL ACC tourney revenue sharing fir those 3 years
5. More importantly than the ACC coaching suspension for Pitino, they got a reduction of scholarships PLUS.......
They will be vacating potentially 110 wins (dropping them from 10th all time to outside the Top 25), of those wins - 15 NCAA tournament wins including the 2012 Final Four banner AND the 2013 National Title. All wins to vacated in which ineligible players participated which from all sources (most significant the head hooker, herself) include those title games
...not to mention the self-imposed tourney ban last year.
Hard to imagine that Pitino knew about this stuff and let it happen...even for a guy like me that roots for him to fail. But definitely easy to think he took the "I'm not even going ask what's going on in those dorms; just don't talk to me" approach. It is a HUGE penalty and one that caught UL off guard today. I don't think the NCAA went easy on them at all...just hard to pin anything illegal against him besides being bad at his duties of monitoring the program.