Looking back on it, Kellen Sampson can laugh. And that's the best sign that time is passing and life is moving forward, that he can look back on his second semester of graduate school and acknowledge with a smile how ridiculous it was that at the exact time the NCAA was effectively ending his father's college coaching career for recruiting violations at Indiana, Kellen was taking a class at IU called NCAA Rules and Compliance.
Seriously, that was the class.
The students examined the NCAA's case against Indiana.
|
|
| Kellen Sampson is working toward his master's degree and then a career in coaching. (University of Oklahoma photo) |
"We were sitting there every day tearing through the rules and regulations of the NCAA, and I'm just like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' I felt like the biggest white elephant in the room, especially when we spent a week on the rules and regulations of phone calls. I told the professor, 'I can probably teach this section.' "
Kellen Sampson is, of course, the son of Kelvin Sampson, the former Indiana coach who was forced to resign a year ago this week after an NCAA report charged him with five major rules violations stemming mostly from impermissible phone calls. He's now an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks, those 11 NCAA tournaments in the 12 seasons at Oklahoma that preceded the move to IU no longer his lasting legacy, forever overshadowed by scandal.
Meantime, Kelvin's son is back in Oklahoma.
Back at Oklahoma.
He's a graduate manager for the third-ranked Sooners, always on the bench just behind the coaches. The plan is to earn a master's degree in May in intercollegiate athletics administration from OU and then turn to coaching full time, at which point the quest to someday be a prominent college basketball figure will began, and so the question is simple: How is this going to work out?
A blessing or a curse?
By all accounts, Kellen Sampson has a bright future in this profession -- the brain, skill and personality to lead a program, a way of carrying himself that compels people to most often describe him as "impressive." Growing up the son of a coach, he obviously knows the game, too. And yet it's difficult not to wonder exactly how his last name will figure into the equation, whether it'll be a blessing that opens doors or a curse that slams them shut.
Imagine being a young Blagojevich trying to break into politics.
Or a young Madoff climbing the ladder of investment banking.
Those names now have negative connotations attached.
So does the name Sampson, at least in this world.
"We talk about some of everything, and that's one of the things we've talked about," said Jeff Capel, the man who replaced Kelvin Sampson at OU and brought Kellen Sampson onto his staff. "He asked me, quite frankly, and I told him that I hope it doesn't. What I hope is that people will judge him as him because he's an incredible kid, and I think that anyone who spends time with him and gets to know him will be very impressed, and they'll walk away, if they have an opening on their staff, thinking, 'I have to have this kid.'
"If I had an opening on my staff right now, I'd hire him," Capel said. "That's how good I think he is, and how good I think he'll be in our profession."
Former Indiana interim coach Dan Dakich echoed those sentiments.
"Kellen is smart, classy and tough," Dakich said. "I have a ton of respect for that kid."
Proof that Dakich means those words came last February when Greenspan tabbed him to replace Kelvin Sampson through the end of the season. Just like Kellen is on staff at Oklahoma now, he was on staff at Indiana then, and the easiest thing would've been for Dakich to politely asked Kellen to step away with his father so that anything and everything associated with the elder Sampson would be removed. But Dakich didn't do that. Rather, he asked Kellen to remain on staff and stand with him for as long as he could stand. And though Kellen acknowledged the situation was "tough" and "a blur," Dakich said Kellen was completely professional the entire time, that he never once let the circumstances affect his job, attitude or demeanor.
"Let me put it this way: If I didn't trust Kellen, he would've been gone when I got out of the meeting with Greenspan," said Dakich, who now hosts a radio show in Indianapolis. "But I trusted him and I wanted him with me, and I didn't think he needed to be punished because he didn't do anything wrong."
'I'm awfully proud of my last name'
It's nice to sit and listen to Kellen Sampson talk about Kelvin Sampson, because his fondness and admiration for his father is noticeable in a lot of different ways -- from the tone to the stories to the way he calls him his "Pops." He talks about always wanting to be like Kelvin, always wanting to follow in his footsteps, what it was like to go straight from elementary school to his gym nearly every day and watch him work, and how he never quite grasped until moving to Indiana that making the NCAA tournament each season isn't as easy as Kelvin Sampson made it look for all those years.
What bothers him?
That people no longer view his Pops the way he views his Pops.
That people no longer think of the wins, just the calls and text messages.
But regardless, the sad reality is that none of that is changing, not now and probably ever. So Kellen Sampson is left to embark on a career where his last name should be an advantage but might actually not be, trusting that coaches and administrators will judge him on his own merits, get to know the impressive young man he has become and give him a chance to succeed in the profession he has always wanted to be a part of.
"Obviously, I'm my own man and I want to stand on my own feet," Kellen said. "But I'm awfully proud of my last name and awfully proud of my father and what he was able to do for 25 years. I'll never back down from that or hide from it because I have a lot of admiration for my father, and I just hope I'm able to accomplish even half of what he did, because that would be a hell of a career."
