The N.C.A.A. announced on Thursday that it had suspended Louisville’s Hall of Fame basketball coach, Rick Pitino, for the first five games of Atlantic Coast Conference play next season and ordered the program to forfeit what could be dozens of victories. Those forfeited wins could include the Cardinals’ 2013 national championship, which would become the first vacated national title in men’s basketball history.

The N.C.A.A. sanctions went above and beyond ones Louisville imposed on itself in 2016, including a postseason ban, after it was revealed that a former director of basketball operations had provided strippers and prostitutes to players and recruits in a campus dormitory over several years.

It is up to Louisville to determine over the next several weeks which victories ought to be vacated based on whether ineligible players competed.

The university said in a statement on Thursday that it was appealing the ruling.

“We believe the penalties imposed today are unfair to the U of L community and our current and former student-athletes, many of whom have already paid a heavy price for actions that did not involve them,” the university’s acting president, Greg Postel, said in the statement. “This ruling is also unfair to Coach Pitino, who we believe could not have known about the illicit activities.”