College Sports

Indiana University is announcing changes within its athletic department, as a result of the alleged infractions incurred by former men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

My reaction? Big deal.

Sampson was already under sanctions from his previous coaching stop at Oklahoma when he was hired by Indiana. When I heard who IU had hired, I couldn’t believe it. When I heard that he was being accused of doing the exact same thing at IU that he had done at Oklahoma, well, no surprise there.

Any university that reaches out to hire a coach that has been found guilty of recruiting violations isn’t making a smart move. But in this case, it was even more incredulous because Sampson had just been sanctioned by the NCAA, and appeared to have no feelings of remorse whatsoever. So he burns Oklahoma, bails and heads to IU, gets them in trouble, gets a fat paycheck for $750,000 (just to go away!), and now Indiana is left to clean up the mess.

And he managed to do all this in under two years… Bravo!

And now, with the NCAA infractions committee getting ready to meet next week to go over alleged rules violations by Sampson at IU, Indiana wants to show that it has cleaned up the program, and that this won’t happen again?

Sampson should have never been hired in the first place! Indiana made it’s bed; guess what, now it’s time to lie in it.

As a college sports fan it makes me mad. Indiana, a school known for playing by the rules, hired a known rule breaker. Why? They wanted to win games. And Mike Davis wasn’t “sexy” enough for them.
There is a lesson to be learned here… but excuse me if I doubt that other university administrators are listening. Everyone takes the high road as long as they are winning. But lose a few? No matter how clean the program, see you later coach! And if the next guy bends or breaks the rules?

It’s all in the game.