Fucking Indiana University, what the hell were you thinking hiring a convicted cheater? I said it was a bad idea at the time; Sampson came to IU already under NCAA sanctions for recruiting violations, and started right in cheating again. And it’s not just the phone calls, he’s giving out gifts to high school students now.
You know why this pisses me off? It’s not because I think the NCAA rules are some kind of enlightened revelations sent from on high on stone tablets; on the contrary, I think they’re ridiculous. But when you break them, it hurts the athletics programs, and that in turn hurts the school. I don’t know what the punishment for this is going to be, but I’ll bet it will be pretty harsh. He broke the same rules that he was on probation for. IU may lose scholarships over this. It will definitely cost IU a lot of money, which will be paid by taxpayers and students.
But what really, really, pisses me off more than anything, is that IU won’t fire the fucker, because he is winning games. Say what you will about Bob Knight, he was an asshole and a bully and he deserved to get fired long before he actually did, but he didn’t cheat.
And apparently we (the taxpayers of Indiana) are paying this cheating fucker over $1 million dollars a year in base salary (paper today mentioned that his contract was for $7.3 million over 7 years).
Plus bonuses on top of that - when this story first surfaced late last year he had to forfeit a $500,000 bonus. I guess 1+ million a year just isn’t enough to make ends meet.
Why anyone should be surprised by this is astonishing. He was a cheater and already under probation when hired. I’ve lived in Indiana for most of the last 30 years, and had no love for Bobby Knight, but at least he ran a clean program.
Of course the slimeball won’t resign, if he did, then he couldn’t try to sue the university for wrongful termination.
Michigan basketball has never recovered from activities like that. It could doom Indiana basketball for years. Indiana is big on basketball. The followers might be really pissed.
I’ll add a bit more. I am a proud member of the Illini Nation, and hang around an Illini board some. Before the official announcement, Hoosiers seemed to play the whole thing down, it didn’t amount to anything, blah, blah, blah. Now, they understand what is at stake and are pretty pissed at KS. The fans even booed him at a home game the night of the announcement.
It’s all about the contract. I’ve read on a Purdue sports list that at least IU was aware enough to write in the contract specifically that they could terminate Sampson if something like this happened. So, unlike most other coaches, he’d have no basis to sue.
It looks like IU is on the fast track to termination. The IU president gave the AD seven days to investigate and report. I’m thinking that when he gets concrete proof of violations (which he will), KS will be fired and the OSU/O’Brien fallout will not be repeated.
Or KS will be bribed with a couple hundred kilo$ not to sue.
I still think that there is a chance that Bobby Knight will be brought in as interim coach to finish the season.
The IU administration definitely comes off as the Captain Renault of this situation (“I am shocked, shocked to discover gambling is going on in here!”). Fact of the matter is that they knew he was a chronic recruitment rules violator, and were willing to look past that for the sake of getting the program back to the Final Four. As ye have sewn. . .
