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February 22, 2008

Sampson dials wrong number at IU

By Jeff Mullin, commentary

Kelvin Sampson’s brief, tumultuous career as head basketball coach at Indiana is over.

Sampson and the university reached a $750,000 settlement Friday, allowing the coach and the school to part ways immediately, the university said in a statement released Friday night.

Sampson has been accused by the NCAA of five major recruiting violations involving improper telephone calls to high school recruits.

What makes this all the worse, of course, is the fact we have been down this road before.

During Sampson’s tenure at Oklahoma he was caught making excessive phone calls to recruits, and was slapped with NCAA restrictions that followed him to IU.

Having been caught once, one would think Sampson would have been more careful about his use of the telephone to contact recruits. Obviously he wasn’t.

Whether it was a case of simple recklessness or sheer arrogance, Sampson has no one to blame but himself for his latest troubles. Sampson’s a bit like the guy who whizzes past a highway patrol car doing 80 in a 65 zone — it’s not like he wasn’t aware he was being watched.

It would seem now Sampson would have nowhere to go but up — to the pros, where recruiting violations do not exist. He will not soon get another job at an NCAA school, at least not one with a rich basketball tradition like Indiana’s.

It’s a shame, because during his tenure at OU Sampson seemed, on the surface at least, hard-working and sincere, and his Sooner teams seemed to reflect his personality — tough, tenacious and never-say-die.

Sampson is undoubtedly not the only coach trying to get an advantage in the cutthroat game of recruiting talented high school players, but he chose to do so in a big, and visible, way. Sampson had his wrist slapped at OU for making 577 impermissible calls, and made 100 more at IU. And he is accused not only of making the improper calls, but lying about them to university and NCAA investigators.

Sampson landed a job at one of the premier basketball programs in the nation and has let it slip through his fingers — his dialing fingers.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.

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