Hoosier and Sampson Divorce Likely

The wheels are coming off the bus in Bloomington. The NCAA released its notice of allegations to Indiana University last week and that report was released to the public today.

In the report, it is alleged that IU coaches including Sampson made over 100 telephone violations involving multiple recruits and misled IU about the nature of the calls and violations.

Now IU finds itself in the unenviable task of responding to 14 pages of infractions and information requests. This from a program that prided itself on "being clean" and had not been penalized for a recruiting infraction since 1960.

Sanctions are sure to follow - not this year since the process will play out through June or July, but next year and beyond. It is likely that Sampson's will be fired at the end of the year (if not sooner) and he may never resurface in Division I basketball.

The alums must surely be asking themselves, "what have we done". A fine tradition has been shredded and it will take years to regain it's reputation. In the meantime they have a decent team, but one that has enough holes that it is not likely to make a deep run in the tournament this year. The current team relies far too heavily on two players, senior DJ White and freshman Eric Gordon, and IU has struggled when each or both of these players play poorly.

In addition to Sampson's recruiting issues, his discipline also appears to be lacking. One player, senior AJ Ratliffe, has left the team as a result of personal issues, that may or may not be related to academic or disciplinary matters (he sat out the first semester due to academics). Additionally, several players were disciplined after a trip to Chicago because of undisclosed rules violations.

It all smells of a program that is out of control. Alumni are enraged and one would expect the administration to make a move to oust Sampson, and possible Athletic Director, Rick Greenspan.

I can't help but think back to the irony of a quote by Bob Knight several years ago. Bob Knight was Indiana's legendary coach that won 3 National Championships before he was driven out by the schools Administration and alumni. While Knight had a volatile personality and used poor judgement during several outbursts, Coach Knight was known throughout basketball to run a squeeky clean program with very high graduation rates.

Several years ago after meeting of the Ethics Committee of the National Associaton of Basketball Coaches, chaired by then-Oklahoma University coach Kelvin Sampson, Coach Knight said "I would rather listen to Saddam Hussein speak about human rights, than some of these guys talk about ethics". A couple years later Sampson left the OU program in a shambles, after Sampson's staff was found to "consciously ignore certain recruiting rules" by the NCAA, to take the job at Indiana.

Unfortunately, what goes around comes around Hoosier fans. If you knowingly hire a cheater, please don't insult our intelligence with "fake shock" after it is revealed that he has cheated again.