Katina Powell - Breaking Cardinal rules: basketball and the escort queen

I FELT LIKE I WAS PART OF THE RECRUITMENT TEAM. A LOT OF THEM PLAYERS WENT TO LOUISVILLE BECAUSE OF ME.

-Katina Powell

Sometimes a perfectly ordinary day will unexpectedly open the door to perfectly extraordinary things.

On a perfectly ordinary day in 2010, Katina Powell went to visit her friend Tink, who, like her, lived and worked in what some would call the mean streets in the west end of Louisville, Kentucky.

In her late thirties and not happy about it, Katina was a single mother of three daughters struggling to find ways to make more money. Just recently, she thought she might have turned the corner. Shed always known men wanted her body, and she liked plenty of sex herself. Now, like waking up to the snap of a hypnotists fingers, shed had a revelation. Men not only would pay for sex, some men were eager to pay, no questions asked.

Easy money? A guy who owned a store in her neighborhood, a man she called The Arab, handed over one hundred dollars for three minutes of her time. Wham, bam, thank you, maam, indeed. No overhead, no taxes, no complaints, no regrets. Sugar for sugar.

Always ready to run with, if not exploit, an idea, Katina started working for Cheetahs Escort Service. Good money could be had, but not necessarily steady money. Of everything she took in, she had to give sixty percent to Cheetahs owner, and she was trying to figure out a way to get around that. She also started something she was proud of, a dance troupe that put on sexy shows in clubs and at occasional bachelor parties. The women were mostly unmarried friends of hers, good-looking party girls who didnt mind strip-teasing.

Naturally, a girl could pick up extra cash by giving customers the satisfaction they sought after becoming thoroughly inflamed watching a half-dozen chocolate-skinned babes flaunting their goodies.

Tink was an intimate friend. He had a barber shop where the smell of marijuana wasnt unknown. At the time the shop was called Cardinal Kuts. Tink was an avid University of Louisville fan, and his customers included some players from the school.

He was the kind of man Katina could talk to about anything. Usually, when Katina came by to see what was happening, one or two of the guys who hung around the shop made a play for her, always without success. "No thanks, nigga," Katina snapped. She had a boyfriend she loved dearly. The sex business was just thatbusiness.

On this day, Tink had a proposal of his own. An unusual proposal.

A very unusual proposal.

How would you like to have your girls dance for some of the players at the U of L?

Are you kidding? When?

Tink knew Andre McGee, a graduate assistant working for Coach Rick Pitino in the University of Louisvilles storied basketball program. McGee wanted the girls to entertain some of the players and potential recruits.

How many girls you need?

Many as you can get. Its worth $300, plus tips.

Understand, like many Louisville residents and other Kentucky residents, Katina loved Cardinal basketball, worshipped the young black superstars who made up most of the teamthey were celebrities, reallyand thought Coach Pitino should have the Basketball Hall of Fame named after him.

It didnt matter that the coach recently had been caught up in a nasty scandal where a woman, now the divorced wife of Pitinos equipment manager, had been found guilty of trying to extort
$10 million from him based on a 2003 sexual encounter and abortion. The school had stood by its prized coach.

To an inner-city girl who had dropped out of Catholic high school and was struggling to earn her GED, the 21,000-student University of Louisville was a kind of monolithic centerpiece in a separate world all its own, a world of brains, money, academic achievement, and national sports glory, especially on the basketball court.

She also knew something about McGee. Out of California, only twenty-three now, he had been starting point guard for the Cardinals for four seasons. He was 5 foot 10, a muscular 180 pounds, and a slick scorer. Twice his Cards had made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament. He had played one year of pro ball in Germany before Pitino took him on to help handle and guide the players.

The responsibilities of his job included assisting in on-campus recruiting efforts.

Among major universities, recruiting competition is fierce. The revenues are enormousLouisville's basketball income is one of the highest in the country, and Pitino is one of the highest-paid coaches. In basketball programs, highly touted potential recruits are wooed like young princes and treated like celebrities. Victories, national glory and millions of dollars sometimes will hinge on the decisions, or perhaps whims, of adolescents still in high school.

In 2010, for example, Pitino put a priority on signing McDonald's All-American guard Rodney Purvis from North Carolina. Sought by half a dozen other large universities, Purvis visited Louisville and verbally committed to play there, partly because a man he knew had joined Pitino's staff. Not six months later, Purvis de-committed and chose North Carolina State because his friend had taken another job. Purvis did not participate in Katina's activities.