IU gambled on a reformed Sampson, and got burned

When Kelvin Sampson was introduced as the coach at Indiana in 2006, he promised a scandal-free era. AJ Mast/Icon SMI

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In a Hoosier Utopia, the promises Kelvin Sampson made at his introductory press conference would have all come true, rather than serve as the prelude to a tragicomic game of telephony. When Indiana presented Sampson as its new coach on March 29, 2006 -- a time at which its basketball program was hoping to be ushered into a prosperous post-Mike Davis era -- Sampson pledged not to repeat the recruiting violations he committed at Oklahoma, and said, "I came to Indiana for one reason: I think you can win championships at Indiana. I think together we can do some special things at Indiana University."

"Special," in the Hoosiers' very non-Utopian present, has a double meaning. In just his second year, Sampson has a potentially special team back in contention for a Big Ten title, with the nation's best two-guard, Eric Gordon, headlining the show. Concurrently, Sampson has dragged IU into an especially messy situation, as the school now faces the prospect of NCAA sanctions for allegedly "major" violations committed by its coach -- in exactly the same fashion he did in Norman, by impermissibly contacting high school prospects via telephone.

And so, instead of Tuesday's meeting between the 15th-ranked Hoosiers and No. 14 Purdue being important on normal, basketball terms, it is also an event for an unfortunate reason: Barring some shockingly exonerating evidence in the report athletic director Rick Greenspan will present to school president Michael McRobbie on Friday, this will be the final game Sampson coaches at Indiana. It will, essentially, be the coda on the most disastrous high-profile hire of this decade in college hoops.

If that seems like a cruel assessment, consider: While there have been coaches who committed career suicide in more nefarious fashion than over-dialing recruits, none exited a stage as big as Sampson's, and none left behind a team as good as these Hoosiers. Given that Greenspan and former IU president Adam Herbert hired Sampson with knowledge of his indiscretions at Oklahoma -- 577 impermissible phone calls to recruits -- they should shoulder a significant part of the blame. There is a general suspicion that every coach bends NCAA rules, but of all the viable candidates to succeed Davis, Greenspan chose one whom he knew was already under NCAA investigation. And therefore Greenspan cannot be considered a victim of Sampson's latest indiscretions, which include both cheating and allegedly lying to NCAA investigators.

Looking at the other post-2000-01 coaching hires that have resulted in NCAA violations, either alleged or proven, it seems that none of those athletic departments could have foreseen their disasters:

• When Tennessee State hired Nolan Richardson III in 2000, he was coming off of a long run as an Arkansas assistant. Tennessee State was excited to land the son of a national-championship coach; instead it got a man who, in 2002, allegedly brandished a gun at assistant coach Hosea Lewis during a Christmas-night practice, and resigned soon after. Ten months later the NCAA released a report busting Richardson III for supervising involuntary summer workouts, as well as putting recruits through illegal tryouts during campus visits. TSU athletic director Teresa Phillips arrived on campus two years after Richardson's hiring, and despite promoting Lewis -- the man who allegedly attacked Richardson with a bag of chains -- to head coach on an interim basis, Phillips kept her job.

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