What Happened at Indiana?
Last Friday,
Indiana
University fired men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson for alleged recruiting violations. Most of violations are for excessive telephone calls to recruits—similar to the charges Sampson encountered as coach at
Oklahoma.
Firing Sampson was the correct action in my view as I said in an earlier post. But in the process,
Indiana pays the guy $750,000. What is up with that?
Apparently,
Indiana gave Sampson the money so that he wouldn’t consider suing the university. Former Ohio State Basketball Coach Jim O’Brien recently received a court settlement after he sued that university for his firing.
But why didn’t
Indiana take a stand in this situation? True, it is paying for an extremely bad case of judgment in hiring a coach who has had blatant NCAA sins in the past.
But what kind of message does this send to people especially youth? If your coach is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, just don’t fire him but give him a reward of sorts too.
I am all for giving coaches rewards for positive, good things in their programs, but really folks this is just flat out wrong.
What do you think?
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