The State of Indiana

First appeared on July 30th, 2008
in The Lebanon Reporter

When basketball coach Tom Crean took the job at Indiana University, one has to wonder what his initial reaction was upon seeing his roster. In the wake of Kelvin Sampson’s blatant disregard for NCAA rules, Indiana has seen coaches fired, players transfer, recruits asking to be released from letters of intent and a total of three scholarships lost (at press time the future of the other 38,000 students on the IU campus remained unclear).
All of this combined has left Crean with one returning player. While his roster is reminiscent of the Ukrainian countryside after the Chernobyl meltdown, Crean remains upbeat. Despite toxic streams choked with glow in the dark fish and poisoned cows giving birth to calves with more eyes than legs, Crean insists he is in a good place.
On February 22nd Indiana agreed to a buyout of former head coach Kelvin Sampson for $750,000. In exchange, Sampson promised to hand over his cell phone, hop the first bus out of Bloomington and, oh yeah, to not sue the pants off the University. Knowing full well he had enough information to prove Sampson had been reckless and dishonest, one can only imagine how shaky President Michael McRobbie’s hand must have been while signing his John McHancock on Sampson’s check.
In late June the NCAA ruled that Indiana was negligent in supervising Sampson, charging the University with “failure to monitor”. This translates to mean the Athletic Department did not follow NCAA guidelines for compliance. Which of course translates to mean they didn’t follow the rules very well (like not at all). These latest findings were likely a major factor in AD Rick Greenspan’s decision to step down come December (that coupled with his skyrocketing unpopularity).
The head scratcher in all of this is the legal trouble Indiana finds itself in. The University has a very well respected law school after all. One that has been in operation for over 150 years and boasts alums working in all 50 states; including one justice on the Indiana Supreme Court.
Greenspan and the athletic department had one of the largest groups of law professors in the state at their disposal and yet they still apparently failed to decipher the NCAA legalese properly when it came to monitoring Sampson and his staff. Maddening.
Surely there are some attorneys out there who would have been willing to come to the defense of their alma mater by taking on Sampson. With this in mind, why would Indiana fear the proposition of flat out firing him? Why buy a guy out when some of the brightest attorneys in the nation cut their teeth in B-Town?
With the reputation of an entire University swirling at the bottom of the bowl, I’m certain Indiana could have easily found a former graduate willing to tackle the case (most likely pro-bono to boot), just to be sure someone plunged the tradition and good name of Indiana University from the depths of despair.
To put this into perspective, IU experiencing legal trouble is a lot like someone from Purdue’s Aeronautical Engineering School struggling to get a kite off the ground. It’s a mess. No, it’s more than a mess. It’s a disaster. In the world of sports it’s a disaster of biblical proportions. What happened to “We will fight for the glory of old IU”? If there was ever a time when the glory of old IU was in jeopardy, and worth fighting for, it‘s definitely now.