Welcome to Seattle, Kelvin Sampson and Indiana University
Indiana University officials are scheduled to go before the NCAA infractions committee today and tomorrow in Seattle over alleged rules violations by former basketball coach Kelvin Sampson (shown here with his evil twin, Emeril Lagasse). Even Pac-10 basketball fans should be aware of the hole that Kelvin Sampson has helped dig for this Big Ten school and their basketball team. It's a big one.
Sampson is accused of providing false and misleading information to investigators about more than 100 impermissible calls, and knowingly violating NCAA recruiting restrictions imposed because of a previous phone call scandal at Oklahoma. In other words, the guy is a freaking idiot that blatantly lied when confronted about his actions. The university is responsible for taking a chance on him.
Things have already started to fall apart for Indiana as a result of Sampson's actions. The Hoosiers are left with just two players from last year's team: a forward that started four games and averaged 1.3 points and a walk-on guard who played 11 minutes all of last season. They had their star player from last year, Eric Gordon, leave for the NBA. Five other players were either dismissed or transferred and their top two recruits for this year backed out of their commitments.
Indiana already has self-imposed penalties, including the loss of one scholarship for 2008-2009. They likely won't be enough though, and the NCAA is expected to hand out further penalties. Rather than just fire Kelvin Sampson, they gave him a parting bonus of $750K when they bought out his contract. It would be nice if we all got a bonus like that when we fuck something up and lie at work.
Tom Crean, formerly at Marquette, took over as head coach at IU this year and is working to rebuild the program. He's off to a solid start with a few recruits, but it's going to be a rough few years at the beginning.
As a Purdue University grad, this Seattlest isn't shedding any tears over the situation. Our hatred for everything IU (and vice-versa) is set in stone. In fact, if we knew where the meetings were being held today we might go down there and shake Sampson's hand.
Image thanks to tommydee21 on Flickr.
