Parrish: Sampson coaching for his career
You fire him now, of course. You fire Kelvin Sampson now, and you stop paying him at the end of the month as his contract allows you to do, and if you're Indiana you do those two things and then you don't look back.
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| It's time for Kelvin Sampson to be served his walking papers. (US Presswire) |
Who knows? Maybe this is why Knight resigned from Texas Tech in the first place. Since abruptly quitting, Knight has refused at every turn to acknowledge that his resignation is the same thing as a retirement, suggesting he might coach again. Maybe Knight cut loose from Texas Tech after hearing from sources at Indiana that Sampson was about to be labeled a recidivist, deceitful scumbag by the NCAA, and that Indiana was going to need a new coach by mid-February. Maybe the timing for Knight is merely serendipitous. I don't know, and I don't care. I don't like Bob Knight, wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire, but if you're Indiana you fire Sampson today and hire Knight tomorrow, because as unpleasant as Knight can be, he plays by the rules.
You fire Sampson immediately because letting him coach the rest of this season sends a message to the world that not only is it OK to cheat at Indiana, but it's OK to cheat at Indiana and then to lie about it to your bosses at Indiana and to your leadership at the NCAA. It sends the message that a cheater will be tolerated so long as he's a winning cheater -- because there is no doubt Sampson is a winning cheater. He's not a winner, because winners don't cheat. But he does win games. Cheaters often do.
You fire Sampson because this is your last chance to admit how wrong you were to hire him back in March 2006 when the NCAA had already labeled him as a willful cheater after he was caught making 577 illegal recruiting phone calls at Oklahoma.
You fire Sampson, or you become a joke. Right now you're a scourge, a school that would hire this cheater in the first place and then allow him to dig into his bag of deceitful phone tricks and cheat for nearly a year under your nose without being detected. Right now Indiana looks bad. You fire Sampson, or bad becomes weak.
You fire Sampson, or you alienate a sizable portion of your fan base. On some topics Indiana fans can be as irritating as any fan base in the country, but give them credit for this: They don't stomach a cheater. The reaction from Indiana fans when Sampson was hired was generally one of concern regarding his foul play at Oklahoma, and the reaction from Indiana fans Wednesday when the NCAA released its findings was something beyond concern and something bordering on fury. Kelvin Sampson has made Indiana look terrible, and while Hoosier Nation remains divided over the 7½-year-old ouster of Bob Knight, Hoosier Nation is united on this front: Indiana basketball is above cheating. Or was.
You fire Sampson, or you take a public relations beating like no college athletic department has ever taken. Kelvin Sampson doesn't have a single friend in the business right now. Fellow coaches despise him for cheating even as he was president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and asking his membership for higher standards of integrity. Fans of opposing schools despise him because he cheats and then he uses the spoils of that cheating to beat their team. As dumb as the media can be at times, all of us understand Sampson has behaved in a way that cannot be tolerated and will not be justified, and every Indiana opponent Sampson faces for the rest of this season will give a new series of journalists in a new city the chance to unload on the lying fraud. And just wait until the NCAA Tournament. The media tornado Indiana will face in March will make yesterday, today and tomorrow look like a gentle breeze.
You fire Sampson because you cannot possibly believe he is capable of change. He blatantly cheated at Oklahoma, got caught, got hired at Indiana and had it written in his contract that he could be fired immediately if caught cheating again ... and then he cheated again. And he had his staff cheat for him, just as he did at Oklahoma. This is no laughing matter, so this is not presented as a joke, but as a sad truth -- the phone is like a rock of crack cocaine, and Sampson is the addict who can't stop himself. He rationalizes his decision to make illegal phone calls as proof of his work ethic, and then he lies about it to his employers and to the NCAA police. He couldn't stop after the Oklahoma scandal. He won't be able to stop after this one. He'll just try to find another way to hide his phone abuse.
You fire Sampson if you're Indiana athletics director Rick Greenspan, no matter how bad it makes you look considering you were the one who hired him in the first place. You fire Sampson not because you want to, but because you have to.
And if you're Indiana president Michael McRobbie, and Greenspan tells you he won't fire Sampson today, then you do it yourself. You fire Sampson. And then you fire Greenspan.
