The NCAA is losing a lot of face by giving Kelvin Sampson and the Indiana Hoosiers college basketball program a tiny slap on the wrist for breaking rules and then breaking them again. Coach Kelvin Sampson was already suspended from recruiting for one year from May 24, 2006, to May 25, 2007 for violations in his stint at Oklahoma and didn’t care for that and kept violating rules and bans.
This was Sampsons response before he took the Indiana job “It is a little bit embarrassing to stand up here and be asked about NCAA violations, but you also have to realize we’re human and we make mistakes. I made a mistake but we’ve corrected it and moved forward.” Look coach, you cheat, you don’t make mistakes. You break rules and overlook them and when your caught, you make petty excuses. Well I guess in the end you have a good recruiting class which is all that counts for you and athletic director Rick Greenspan.
Violations
- Called recruits even under sanctions for prior violations ( He called recruits even though he as banned)
- Contacted 9 potential recruits by “at least 25 telephone calls” (The NCAA has limits on how many times you can contact recruits)
- He broke sanctions and lied to NCAA investigators
Penalties
- Sampson loses a $500,000 bonus for 2007-2008
- Team loses one scholarship for 2008-2009 season
- Assistant Rob Senderoff banned for one year from off campus recruiting and making recruiting phone calls. He also gets no bonus or salary increase for the next year.
This is a sorry excuse for penalties when the Hoosiers already got some of the top players in the recruiting class. It makes me laugh that they are banning another assistant from recruiting by phone. Hello NCAA Sampson was banned from that and that didn’t stop him. This is what is wrong with a lot of sports these days. People just want to win so much that sometimes breaking the rules is ok because the ends results is a winning team. They need to make harsher penalties. Capital punishment in sports sounds great to me. Lets say the Hoosiers are not allowed to play in the post season. That’s capital punishment and should teach the athletic director at Indiana that he should be more than disappoint ed.