Bryan Burwell

Call it whatever you want – a rush to judgment, a suspension or a calculated prelude to a firing. But whatever you do, please don’t call the week of waiting for a decision on Indiana basketball coach Kelvin Sampson a mistake.

Whatever timetable Indiana University is working on, and whenever school administrators dismiss him or prolong the process while they find the proper legal loophole to leap through, sooner or later the wisest thing to do is dismiss Sampson as their coach. No matter how good he may be on the sidelines and how far this 15th-ranked Hoosier team could go in NCAA Tournament, his actions off the court have been inexcusable.

The NCAA says Sampson broke its rules knowingly and repeatedly, then lied to cover his tracks. He came to Indiana two years ago, leaving a fresh trail of recruiting violations paving his path from Oklahoma to Indiana. IU decided to ignore that, hired him and gave him another chance to do things the right way. But Sampson betrayed the university by picking up right where he left off, piling up another stack of recruiting violations in Bloomington until the NCAA sleuths caught up with him again.

This is a sad story. And what makes it so sad isn’t merely that one of the best coaches in basketball failed to see why he should stop cheating his way to the top. The real tragedy goes far beyond that. The saddest aspect of this mess is that the University of Indiana realizes that the mere fact that he’s a serial cheater isn’t enough to fire him.

Nowadays, you can’t fire coaches for violating NCAA rules without being very careful. There’s a very good reason why IU administrators have moved so cautiously with Sampson, and it has everything to do with what happened just down the interstate Wednesday afternoon in an Ohio courthouse. The Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear Ohio State's appeal of former basketball coach Jim O’Brien’s near $3 million lawsuit. O’Brien won that ruling after a lower court said OSU wrongfully fired him, even after he admitted he violated NCAA rules by giving a $6,000 loan to a prospective recruit.

O’Brien’s lawsuit was based on language in his Ohio State contract that severely limited what the university could do and when it could do it if he broke NCAA rules. The contract said OSU was required to take a series of steps before firing him, including a lengthy investigation by the school and the NCAA. Even though Ohio State’s attorneys argued that O’Brien shouldn’t be paid for breaking the rules, shamefully, the Ohio courts disagreed with the school.

So O’Brien sued the university for firing him wrongfully and won $2.2 million plus interest two years ago, then an appeals court upheld the award. So OSU appealed to the state Supreme Court, and this week lost that appeal when the court voted by a 5-2 margin not to hear the case.

Sampson in trouble at Indiana Hoosiers barely win in Dakich’s first game Indiana buys out Sampson, players don't mutiny SN: Indiana’s descent has only just begun Opinion: Time for IU to start fresh tradition Vote: Who should be Indiana's new coach Opinion: School betrayed by lying hypocrite Vote: Will Sampson coach again?  |    Discuss

So now every university president knows that they have to proceed with caution even when they catch their coach with a smoking gun. So Sampson gets a committee to investigate him, even though the NCAA has already spelled out clearly the countless improper phone calls that Sampson and a member of his staff made constituting five “major violations.”

How can a man already under sanction for making 577 impermissible calls at Oklahoma turn right around and continue to make even more improper calls at Indiana?  Two years ago when the NCAA caught Sampson the first time, it outlined why the recruiting bylaws put so much emphasis on excessive phone calls to recruits:

“The committee has consistently heard that the key to successful recruiting is being able to develop relationships with prospects and their families. The obvious purpose of these violations was to be the first institution to make recruiting contact with prospects and then to build on the relationship by having multiple impermissible contacts with the prospects in the very important early stages of their recruitment. These calculated violations created a significant recruiting advantage over institutions abiding by the telephone contact limitations.”

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Pain on the skating rink, flying high on the hardwood, upsets on the football field, and more. more photos

So Sampson continued these “calculated violations” and refused to abide by the NCAA laws, and the more I hear about what Sampson was busted for, it bothers me on a personal level. It bothers me because Sampson is a smart man who once served on the college coaches ethics committee, and he should have known that rulebook by heart. Breaking the rules was no mistake. It was a calculated recruiting strategy.

It also means that Sampson is a deceitful hypocrite. At the same time he was making all those illegal phone calls at Oklahoma, the NCAA was hot on the trail of former Missouri basketball coach Quinn Snyder for the same thing. Yet Sampson was one of the folks leading the whispering campaign against Snyder. I vividly recall a few casual conversations with Sampson back then where he acted like Snyder was as shady as they get. His conversations were full of eye rolls and shoulder shrugs and holier-than-thou gossip that turned out to be true about what illegal methods Snyder and members of his staff were doing to gain recruiting advantages.

I guess my biggest mistake was thinking that was consternation, not admiration, in Sampson’s voice.

MORE FROM COLLEGE BASKETBALL

College basketball Section Front

No. 6 Purdue survives No. 9 Vols in a thriller Beyond the Arc: A ranked showdown that delivered   No. 3 Longhorns beat Iowa to reach CBE title game Cincy starts fast, upends No. 24 Vandy in Maui   Wisconsin edges Arizona at Maui Gonzaga rallies past Colorado Beyond the Arc: 'Cuse can't get better ... or can it? Syracuse jumps to No. 10 in latest AP poll UConn still No. 1 in AP women's basketball poll Beyond the Arc: 5 things to watch this week   College basketball Section Front   Add College basketball headlines to your news reader: