Kelvin Sampson, looking like a dead man walking since the NCAA's latest allegations that he violated rules and lied to investigators, coached what deserves to be his final game with Indiana on Tuesday.
When a university president announces a one-week investigation into charges against a repeat offender the way Indiana's Michael McRobbie did last week, he is not looking for an exoneration. He is lining up his lawyers.
Friday is the deadline for Athletic Director Rick Greenspan and a small group of investigators to make a recommendation to McRobbie about Sampson's future. If the recommendation is that Sampson should be fired for cause, such as "a significant, intentional or repetitive violation" of NCAA rules, according to his contract he could be "suspended pending termination," and allowed 10 days to request an appeal. After that, McRobbie would make a final decision about whether to fire him.
Compared to academic fraud and paying players, too many phone calls to recruits might seem frivolous, akin to a teenager running up too many minutes or text message charges on his cellphone.
To the NCAA and Indiana, the most serious charges are whether Sampson lied, and whether he continued to flaunt the rules after being caught.
But to Sampson's colleagues -- many of the same men who once elected him president of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches -- the phone calls matter.
The NABC, which adopted what proved to be an unfortunate slogan in "Guardians of the Game," reprimanded Sampson after the Oklahoma scandal in 2006, with ethics chairman Reggie Minton saying, "We must hold one another accountable."
Recruits are the lifeblood of an ever more high-stakes game, and anybody who tries to play by the rules gets hurt when somebody else doesn't.
Eddie Sutton, the former Oklahoma State coach now at San Francisco who competed against Sampson in the Big 12 Conference, said he was "sorry" to hear the reports about Sampson because he thinks a lot of him. But, he added, the issue is serious.
"I'll tell you why," Sutton said. "When you can only call a recruit once a week and someone else is calling them more than once a week, that's a big advantage.
"Anyone who's been in the game can tell you that next to throwing a bunch of money on the table, that's as damaging as anything one can do."
Sutton, of course, was the coach at Kentucky when an assistant coach sent money to recruit Chris Mills, but Sutton was not found responsible.
