Fellow coaches pay toll for Sampson’s bad calls

If this coaching thing doesn’t work out for Kelvin Sampson — a situation becoming more and more tentative with each downloaded ringtone — perhaps he could land a gig promoting the Philippine Long Distance Company.

Its slogan: The power of convergence.

You figure Sampson might take a bit of editorial license as celebrity spokesman and prefer this: The power of cheating.

This is bigger than 10 to 12 three-way calls to basketball recruits. More serious than deliberately seeking existence within the gray area of cell phone services. More significant than one seedy coach thumbing his nose at those statutes that regulate his profession.

By violating the same rules concerning impermissible calls for the second time over the course of directing different programs, the second-year Indiana coach has again provided life to the theory that all coaches cheat and it’s just the brainless and sloppy ones who get caught.

Thinking is, if the former president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches who during his tenure leading that organization had the Ethics Committee address many problems with violations facing the game can so willfully break rules a second time, why should we believe anyone is clean?

Sampson has more excuses than the child who forgot his homework, a list of foolish explanations for why after violating rules at Oklahoma when he and his staff made 577 extra calls to different prospects, he has now been found to have disobeyed his one-year ban of initiating telephone contact with recruits and that Indiana assistants made about 35 other prohibited calls.

Sampson can insist over and over there was no intent to break rules. That he was more careless than calculating. None of it washes. It’s all dirty.

“Kelvin has been a good friend for a long time,” said UNLV coach Lon Kruger following his team’s practice Friday. “But if you knowingly break a rule, you’re going to do it again. That’s my attitude.

“It comes down to individual character. A lot of people in our business take pride in getting around the rules, like if you don’t get caught, you didn’t cheat. That’s ridiculous. If you want to do it, you can find ways. I’ve just never understood the satisfaction.

“It’s like cheating in golf. You cheat by a couple strokes and say you shot something you didn’t. You cheated. I don’t understand that. You violate an (NCAA) rule and are under all that scrutiny, and you still do it again? I don’t know …”

It’s a fairly potent stance and also a notable one. There is a level playing field in college athletics like there is a lack of cash in a casino vault. It’s difficult enough fighting the perception of belonging to a non-Bowl Championship Series conference while trying to obediently follow that sizable digest of NCAA rules. Tolerating the transgressions of others can’t possibly be embraced, close friend or not.

How ironic. UNLV basketball once swam in a renowned hot tub of NCAA violations while Indiana was led by the no-nonsense decree of Bob Knight. Now, the Rebels are directed by a coach in Kruger whose resume screams of cleanliness and the Hoosiers by a guy who can’t keep his assistants’ fingers from dialing and connecting him into calls.

The reaction of many to Sampson’s latest fiasco is to assign different stages of blame. Some say the NCAA should have been more specific when disciplining the coach for his Oklahoma violations. Some fault Indiana for hiring a coach who had been caught breaking NCAA rules, that once again a supposed institution of higher learning was far more concerned with wins and losses than the moral capacity of the man responsible for producing them.

You shouldn’t completely accept any of it because if so, you lessen the guilt of the one person who deserves far more than the lion’s share — a coach who obviously thinks he’s above the rules.

This isn’t about a handful of telephone calls. It’s about a culture in which a grimy few unfairly define an entire fraternity.

“My attitude is not normal,” Kruger said. “I go to the extreme. I feel if a guy cheats, he shouldn’t be able to coach. It’s not a death sentence. He just can’t coach and has to work doing something else.”

That has not happened yet at Indiana because the Hoosiers have a terrific team capable of making a Final Four run, and Lord knows they wouldn’t upset that kind of chemistry. They once loved Knight’s spotless record concerning NCAA rules. They just didn’t approve of the part when he began losing.

They did, however, discipline one of Sampson’s assistants and penalize the program one scholarship for next season and withheld a $500,000 bonus due the head coach. I’m guessing that would cover his cell phone bill last month.

Well, at least part of it.

Three-way calls cost extra.

Ed Graney’s column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-4618.