So let me see if I get this right. You’re Indiana University, a school which has prided itself on having a “clean” men’s basketball program for decades. You’ve just hired Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, a coach whose ethics are seemingly non-existent — so much so that he’s landed his former university on probation and has been barred from off-campus recruiting at his new school. The NCAA has given you and the coach a one-year probationary period, where no funny stuff is supposed to happen. Given all that, one MIGHT expect that you’d want to keep a close eye on the guy, to make sure that he’s following the letter of the law.
But of course, that scenario only works in places where logic and common sense rule the day. No, this is Indiana University, a place where it takes an unpaid intern to do the work that the paid employees in the compliance office hasn’t done.
Yes, according to the Indianapolis Star this morning, this unnamed, unpaid intern just happened to stumble across the three-way calls and other excessive phone calls while doing a required audit for the NCAA. Not only did the intern discover this, but also noted, according to the article:
The intern noticed a men’s basketball recruit had been called several times and, on Jan. 29, had been involved in a three-way calling pattern.
So wait…the compliance office, right in the middle of this year-long probation for Sampson, couldn’t get their act in gear and monitor the head coach’s calling pattern? Even though it was phone calls that led to the sanctions in the first place? What on earth is wrong with people?
Also worth noting — the university apparently had no plans whatsoever to release ANY information about these violations to the public until after the NCAA had made its ruling. Luckily for the fans, someone leaked the information to one of those evil Internet web site things, and that forced them to hold a press conference on the matter on Sunday.
Why do I get the feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg?
Kelvin Sampson is just a watered down version of Bob Huggins, IMO, and IU deserves everything they get for hiring him.
I don’t understand the fuss. I am not trying to make light of the situation but the sanctions placed on Sampson were window dressing in the first place. Do you honestly believe that a Big Ten coach, at Indiana none the less is actually not going to speak with recruits? I am not so naive to think that Sampson didn’t know he was breaking the rules, of course he did. He was just stupid enough to get caught - again. If making some phone calls is the worst they can dig up on Indiana then I can live with that.
Three pts:
- As one of the former IUB Faculty members that assisted in establishing a pretty good and long-standing Compliance internship program b/t the academic dept and IU athletics, the two cents are that indeed, the interns that worked in the Compliance office were excellent. Actually, some of them are now full-time Compliance officers, either with MS or JD degrees, or in the process of completing grad studies in other institutions. These interns do good work… apparently sometimes too good!
- This does not necessarily mean that the Compliance office would have missed what was going on gentlemen; the documentation is pretty extensive, the records they get are pretty much what Feds and Governmental entities would call for with subpoenas, minus the subpoena power — although NCAA policy is sometimes emulating or characterized as such, another story worth more discussion — and these records would bring such snafus to light. And if one presumes they would withhold knowingly something of the sort, I beg to differ, and here’s why: it’d be their gluteus maximus first and foremost, before any penalties levied against any coach or AD… And as we see, most frequently it is the Compliance staff that gets the boot, which in this case would be unfair.
- I agree with the last point: it very much so makes sense to withhold info on violations from the public, until a review is complete. Oftentimes, institutions and admins get in trouble exactly at that time, of PR games and public announcements, as we saw @ Duke and elsewhere. That point was dead-on made by Thermocaster at the related Podcast of 10/15, re: Sampson’s future claims against IU, in the case of termination, whilst they supported him publicly during this phase…
As we mentioned in another post, should the Committee of Infractions and the Appellate bodies decide that there is cause for sanctioning IU, then IU has recourse against Coach Sampson… Now just imagine what entertainment value such an announcement would have, had we not been informed of what we now know in advance!
The mutual feeling that this is the tip of the iceberg may prove to be just a Cassandrean hunch… or who knows, maybe another Pythean oracle… Time will tell. What would be sad if people (admins, Compliance staff, etc who seem to have done their part educating and ensuring coaches know what the heck they’re supposed to do), who were not responsible for omissions and negligent actions (clearly referring to the coaching staff here), would have to suffer from such poor judgment calls or mere (un)professional indifference. Let’s see what else will go down in B-town!
Hammer - Really, the sanctions were window dressing? Did you see what the penalties were for Oklahoma?
I must strongly disagree with the “if the worst thing they find is phone calls, then I’m okay with that” mode of thinking. This isn’t Michigan or Northwestern, this is Indiana. Both the head coach and the athletic department knew the rules they had to play under. But the head coach and his staff decided that following those rules wasn’t important. How difficult would it really have been to keep track of the number of phone calls they were making (or the nature of those calls), particularly due to the fact that this was the exact same thing that Sampson and his Oklahoma staff were busted for last year?
The “book” on Sampson, from fellow media members who cover both the Big 12 and the Big Ten, is that he’s one of the dirtiest coaches in the business. I have no question that this is just a small sampling of what we’re in for during his tenure here.
TK - I think the problems here come from above, not within, the compliance department. It is inconceivable to me, given the probationary period laid down by the NCAA, and given the potential of repeat offender penalties for breaking that probation, AND given Sampson’s history of using questionable (or out-and-out rule-breaking) recruiting tactics, that the IU athletic department didn’t institute a highly focused and consistent review process of the coaches’ telecommunications activities from the moment they stepped on campus. I sense you interpreted my post as an accusation of malicious obfuscation, and that is not necessarily my contention. Rather, I wonder if the compliance office was actually instructed to treat this as a special case in the first place. If they weren’t, then I view that as unadulterated negligence on the part of the A.D.’s office.
An open response to Bruce’s post above:
You bring up Huggins, and while he didn’t bring in the best of kids (Just like Sampson’s recruits at OU and now at IU), I don’t remember him getting busted for cheating, and certainly not twice for the same offense.
And remember this about Huggy Bear, his final two seasons at Cincy the overall GPA of his Bearcats were better than the Hoosiers of Mike Davis.
By even comparing the two, you’ve done an injustice to Bob Huggins.
Not to mention the GPA of Sampson’s Oklahoma teams…
I’ve yet to figure out the connection between coaching ethics and a kids’ GPA.
Meh, I’m really not too excited one way or another.
This is the Patriots videotaping signals, something other teams fans can get all excited about but in the big picture means little.
Bragging about having a clean program is one thing when you run a clean program AND make the final 4.
Bragging about having a clean program when your program goes one and done in the tournament every year is like a girl having a nice personality.
All I am saying is that Sampson has never done anything wrong besides pick up the phone (or be patched into a conference call) and the media makes it out like he and the IU program (which until now was unbelieveably clean) should get the death penalty. Meanwhile you have a kid in Bud Mackey who has threatened his entire life with a horrible decision and we’re focused on 10 phone calls. Thats the problem. Again, Sampson cheated and I am satisfied with the punishment but its a feeding frenzy over a phone call while Bud (who should face the consequences) is in a fight for his life. You can make the argument that the two incidents are unrelated and yet somehow a story about Sampson is national headlines for breaking an artibritrary rule (the NCAA has no REAL authority if its members chose to ignore it and picking a set number of phone calls is completely arbitrary) and yet a story in which real laws were broken goes largely ignored by comparison. So where should the focus really be? The minimal competitive advantage gained by making 10 of what was probably thousands of phone calls by the IU Coaching staff? Its a stupid mistake that showed a blatent disregard for his probation but all this fuss over phone calls and now he is a monster who constantly cheats? I guess I just disagree with the severity of the reaction. In the pecking order of violations I guess I just don’t see this as major even if it is somewhat habitual.
Also this is NOT exactly what Sampson did at Oklahoma. At OU Sampson exceed the number of permissible phone calls he was allowed to make. This most recent incident occured as a result of a violation of his probation and most likely would not have been a violation for any other coach.
Ah, but the 35 calls by Sampson’s staff which exceeded the NCAA-mandated number IS the same thing that happened at Oklahoma. The undocumented calls from home by his staff are also what happened at Oklahoma. The Indy Star article even noted that the intern, after discovering the first of the three-way calls, noticed a pattern of such calls in late January of this year between that recruit and Sampson.
While the three-way calling is not prohibited by the NCAA, the simple fact is that it WAS prohibited for Sampson, due to the probation. This legalistic argument of “well, it wouldn’t have been off-limits for anyone else” misses the point that it was explicitly off-limits for Sampson to do so. Those were the rules…and the pattern of calls that was uncovered flies directly in the face of Sampson’s mealy-mouthed excuse-making in the Sunday press conference. Makes me wonder what else he isn’t telling the truth about.
The difference between Bud Mackey’s situation and Sampson’s situation is simple. Mackey is a teenage kid who obviously made a big mistake, and I think that story’s been covered quite a bit by the local media. Sampson, on the other hand, is supposed to be a responsible adult, who also just happens to be the leader of a top-tier Division I basketball program. Yet in Sampson, we have a person who, as chairman of the NCAA subcommittee on ethics, crafted a set of rules restricting phone calls to recruits, while simultaneously putting together a deliberate and willful effort to break those rules while at Oklahoma. He was caught, placed on probation, and then broke them again while on probation. That’s why the reaction has been so severe.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on the severity of this issue. I see Sampson as a guy who took his extensive knowledge of the rules (after dealing with his sanctions at OU) and used it to gain a small competative advantage in a ridiculously cut throat business. Stupid? Yes. But punishable by being chastized to the point where people are trying to get him fired? Not so much. Hes being punished and it appears to fit the violation.
The Bud Mackey situation is different than Sampson. The point of the analogy was to look at things on a bigger scale. Some intern has to go through a years worth of phone records? Is that what the NCAA has been reduced to? The grand scheme of things is that yes Mackey is just a dumb teenager but his is a life and death (who knows what else he could be involved in) situation and Sampson made some phone calls. Thats all I am trying to establish is the severity of a drug deal and subsequently the insignificance of 35 phone calls.