Knight to Sampson: Trash to Trash

The list of Kelvin Sampson's NCAA rules infractions will be published by Indiana University tomorrow.  It will show that he violated NCAA recruiting rules hundreds of times since coming to Indiana University.  Indiana went from one coach that embarrassed the university to another one.  If you replace one sleaze ball with another sleaze ball, you should not expect much improvement.  Sampson came to I.U. under a cloud of NCAA violations.  He promised to be good.  He did not do it. 

This sort of thing really angers me.  As a 25 year college teacher, who did not earn as much in my total career as Sampson makes in a year, I spent a substantial protion of every course I taught trying to instill ethical behavior in my students and trying to set an example of that behavior for them.  Then they look around them at their university who hires a coach and pays him millions and when he cheats, officials say "Oh, you should not do that, but keep winning and we'll overlook a little cheating." 

This "winning is everything" attitude is the reason coachs like Bobby Knight, Kelvin Sampson, and Bill Belichick (I know he's a professional coach) are maintained in their jobs and paid millions.   In our culture, ethics takes a back seat to winning. 

If i.u. does not fire Sampson, I hope no one in the state watches or attends another basketball game he coaches.  My guess is there's a fat chance of that. 

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