Kelvin Sampson’s World Today
“Failed to comply with sanctions imposed …”
“Exceeded NCAA limits …”
“Acted contrary to the NCAA principles of ethical conduct …”
“Failed to deport himself in accordance with the generally recognized high standard of honesty …”
“Engaged in an impermissible recruiting contact …”
After a one week “internal investigation” of the above charges, Indiana University President Michael McRobbie announced that Kelvin Sampson and the school will agree to a $750,000 buyout of the coach’s contract and he will resign, and that Athletic Director Rick Greenspan cosigned on that decision.
Meantime, it is being said that a redacted name within the NCAA’s charges against Sampson is that of none other than fantastic freshman guard Eric Gordon.
This is the world Kelvin Sampson lives in today.
The reaction of the team, led by D.J. White, was to throw their support behind Sampson and to say they will not play if assistant Dan Dakich is named as the interim head coach. In fact, some of the team skipped practice this weekend:
D.J. White and five other Indiana University basketball players were not at practice this afternoon at Assembly Hall.
Earlier, a person close to the team said players threatened to boycott Saturday’s game at Northwestern if something happened to coach Kelvin Sampson.
The source said players will follow White’s lead on whether to play.
White, Armon Bassett, Jordan Crawford, Jamarcus Ellis, DeAndre Thomas and Brandon McGee were not at practice.
After Greenspan met with the players last night and today, guess who will be the interim head coach?
Dan Dakich.
Stomach tight?
About the Sampson situation, this is where the focus won’t be. The focus won’t be on the fact that the 577 “phone violations” at the University of Oklahoma were committed over a four-year period. The focus won’t be on the fact that Sampson’s entire coaching staff was involved in making the calls.
The focus won’t be on the fact that when the most recent charges against Sampson came to light in October of last year and that the IU compliance committee found Sampson to be in violation of his probation, but A.D. Rick Greenspan docked him a $500,000 raise he was promised anyway, mainly for appearances sake.
There won’t be focus on the knowing that we’re discussing about 12 alleged phone violations against Sampson this time. Nor will you hear Sampson’s side of the story, that he received phone calls at his home and thought they were direct calls from players, but were third party calls originating from the athletic department and/or his assistant’s offices.
Twelve alleged violations. And what is contended is whether or not Sampson orchestrated these calls or whether he is innocent.
Are you queasy yet?
The immediate thought here is this: Bob Knight was fired as IU basketball coach because his personality was flawed. He won games, won national championships, won Big Ten titles, graduated students, and never was involved in any illegal activity that we know of, at least.
But he was fired because he brow-beat players.
Then Knight’s assistant Mike Davis took over the team. The players loved him - heck, he recruited most of them. He was involved in no NCAA violations.
However, he did not win Big Ten titles, national championships, nor, in booster’s eyes did he win enough games.
So Mike Davis was fired, not like his predecessor because he won but brow-beat players, but he was fired because he did was like by his players but did not win enough games.
Stomach beginning to churn?
Now Kelvin Sampson has accepted a buyout and resigned. Sampson won games. He recruited well. Sampson and his wife were revered by the players.
But because of about 12 phone calls that the IU compliance department - and Greenspan - didn’t find cause enough to fire Sampson, when the NCAA came back months later and accused Sampson of lying, Greenspan rushed to ensure that Sampson was forced to resign.
If he hadn’t resigned, Kelvin Sampson would more than likely have been suspended for the season and then fired.
Is the feeling up in your throat?
From the results of the most recent Indiana-Greenspan “investigation,” we can only assume that had the charges against been serious enough, he would have been fired some four months ago. From the result of this most recent go-around, we can only assume that something changed for the university not to come to the same conclusion it did in October of 2007.
Let’s not ask questions. Instead let’s break this series of incidents down to their lowest common denominators.
For results to change so drastically, the NCAA found out something illegal according to NCAA rules that the IU compliance office failed to unearth. If Sampson was not forced to resign or fired, the university would have been charged with the mortal NCAA sin of “lack of institutional control.”
This charge would have meant athletic department-wide sanctions for the university and lots of people who were recently in the IU athletic department out on the tiles scuffling for jobs. And the first person to go would have been ————- present athletic director Rick Greenspan.
We can surmise, then, that Greenspan orchestrated every move of the one-week look into the 12 phone calls.
Because of the abruptness with which the 180-degree turn in attitude toward Sampson occurred and from the litany of “self-imposed sanctions” enacted by other colleges and universities when faced with the dreaded lack of institutional control collar, we can gather that the NCAA is wise to Indiana’s game. Since this is the case, the NCAA must know that Greenspan is hiding something or covering for someone or some people within his department; perhaps even for himself.
By all rights we should expect the NCAA to announce sometime very soon that the Indiana University athletic department is under a separate investigation for obstructing their examination of the Sampson affair. However, as we can see from the Oklahoma case with Sampson and a case at Fresno State University involving one of Sampson’s ex-assistants, this is not the case. Rather than engage in the obvious probe into what lies behind this university obfuscation, the NCAA magically, as if hypnotized, turns and walks away, handing out minor penalties that amount to nothing on their way out the door.
This is not possible unless the goal of any investigation is to single out one character or set of characters rather than set examples for Division I schools by handing down a prescribed set of punishments for actions of the sort allegedly engaged in by Sampson and Indiana.
By now, if you need to remove yourself and seek a toilet, I understand.
If we tally all the mis-steps and oddities within the set of incidents from last year to this, we are left with some scary propositions.
We know that the Indiana University compliance office is either incompetent or it was trying to hide information that would have exposed Sampson as a liar in 2007.
Or.
There was nothing wrong with Sampson’s actions as they relate to telephone usage and communicating with recruits.
No matter which end we come up with, the person signing off on all those outcomes is Rick Greenspan. This makes it especially conspicuous and specious that it was Greenspan who ran the latest, rushed one week “investigation” into the phone calls.
We know that members of the Indiana University basketball program have serious problems with the treatment of their now former head coach, Kelvin Sampson. We know that these problems were so serious that, despite their gaudy 22-4 record, some players are willing to sit out tomorrow’s game against Northwestern and perhaps sit out the remainder of the season in protest. We know that Greenspan wanted from the beginning to replace Sampson with former IU player, Dan Dakich. However, this is the move that has sent these protesting players over the top.
There is something or there are some things that the players know about Dakich that would lead them to take such an extraordinary stance. Greenspan met with the players - and six of the 13 members of the Hoosiers basketball team failed to show up for practice today. It stands to follow that this is not an arbitrary position being taken by the players and that their relationship with Dakich is acrimonious - and has been for some time.
It is important, then to know the root of this acrimony.
If the acrimony is on-court and dealing with coaching methods, the problems are points of contention that can be resolved. However, since the players sat out practice after their meetings with Greenspan, there are more than likely off-court considerations that the players have taken into account, and it is those considerations that weighed heaviest in their decision to distance themselves from the team.
These are the players who were recruited by and played for Mike Davis. Some of them, including D.J. White considered transferring when Davis left. But when Sampson was hired they stayed at IU. When Davis was fired top recruit Eric Gordon switched allegiances from Indiana to the University of Illinois, but when Sampson was hired he signed a letter of intent with and went to Indiana to play for Sampson.
All of the players other than White were recruited by Sampson. All are black. All said they would practice and play if Ray assistant coach McCallum was named as the interim head coach. McCallum is black.
Greenspan named Dakich. Dakich is white.
It is being said on television sports media outlets and in print that the players in question are young and impressionable and do not know what they do:
(By the way, don’t be angry with the players. They’re young, they’re emotional, and their desire to show loyalty to the man who recruited them is noble, if misguided. Eventually, they will understand that if Sampson really cared that much about them, he wouldn’t have jeopardized their futures by breaking the rules).
But let these same players get caught up in some sort of receiving illegal gifts scheme and watch and read how quickly these “misguided” young men are perceived as greedy and slick and knowing in the way the world works and ‘how they knew what they were doing all the time.’
Dry heaves are to be expected.
Of course there is no smoking gun that race is involved in the decisions made by Greenspan and IU ’s Australian president, Michael McRobbie.
But.
The footprints of race and moves made with race in mind. It is no accident that nine of the top 10 Hoosier players, statistically, are black. It was no accident that Davis was reviled by the overwhelmingly white “Hoosier Nation.” It was no accident that every white former IU player who had head coaching experience was being considered for the position after Davis was gone. And it was no accident that the sentiment of Hoosier Nation was that the hiring of Sampson over a coach who “understands how important Indiana basketball is to ‘the people’ of Indiana,” was a mistake.
Now, thanks to this “scandal” involving about 12 phone calls of questionable origin, Indiana University has its white, former IU player as head coach.
We know Rick Greenspan acted far too quickly for there to be an adequate re-investigating of the charges levied at Sampson. We know this week was spent figuring out the best method to relieve Sampson of his duties. So, in fact, there was no investigation.
And we know not even this obvious lie has piqued the interest or registered on the B.S. radar of the NCAA’s investigative arm to find out exactly what role Greenspan played in Sampson’s demise.
We will never know if Sampson was truly guilty or innocent. We will never know why the players are protesting and do not want to play for Dakich (though, in the end, they probably will play out the string, for themselves, if nothing else); why White, a senior led the protest of these players recruited by Sampson. We will never know why the NCAA chose now, rather than after the season to levy the charges at Sampson. We will never know how, of all the names redacted from the NCAA report, the only one that can be discerned is allegedly that of Eric Gordon’s.
What we do know is that somebody is owed something - and the NCAA offices are just down the road in Indianapolis.
It’s to be understood if you threw up a long time ago.
