Sampson sanctioned again for calls

IU men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson and staff will be punished after an internal investigation revealed the staff participated in 45 impermissible phone conversations with prospective recruits, IU Athletics Director Rick Greenspan said Sunday. \nSampson will not receive a scheduled $500,000 raise – nearly one-third of his salary – and the team will lose one scholarship for the 2008-09 season. Assistant coach Rob Senderoff will not receive a salary bonus this year or next and will be prohibited from making recruiting phone calls and recruiting off campus. \nAbout two months after he was hired at IU, Sampson was sanctioned by the NCAA for 577 excessive phone calls he and his staff made while at Oklahoma. IU hired Sampson in March 2006.\nThe impermissible phone calls made while Sampson was at IU occurred during the one-year sanction period from May 24, 2006, to May 25, 2007. \nSampson participated in three-way phone calls on 10 occasions during the year. Three-way phone calls are allowed by NCAA rules, but the NCAA-imposed sanctions barred Sampson from participating in them. Sampson said that on only one occasion he was aware he participated in a three-way phone call.\nAdditionally, members of the IU men’s basketball staff made 35 phone calls more than the NCAA’s allowable limit for contacting recruits, which is a secondary violation. \nSampson apologized during a Sunday teleconference.\n“There certainly is no intent to think we are above the law,” Sampson said. “The rules that we broke were mistakes – not mistakes we’re hitting our chest thinking we don’t have to worry about this. It was a mistake. We take full responsibility for what happened.”\nSampson said that before the investigation, he believed he and his staff “followed all the rules” set by the NCAA sanctions.\n“We think this is something we can be 100 percent – not 99 percent or 99.5 – but we can be 100 percent compliant with this as we move forward,” he said.\nSampson said that during the three-way phone calls, recruits called assistant coaches and were patched through to Sampson after the recruits could not get a hold of Sampson by calling him directly.\nGreenspan said IU will voluntarily extend the NCAA sanctions for another year, though Sampson will be allowed to recruit off campus – something he was barred from doing last year.\nMost of the impermissible phone calls, both the three-way calls and the excessive calls, were made by Senderoff.\nIU President Michael McRobbie said he was “very disappointed” with the violations.\n“We play by the rules at Indiana University,” McRobbie said in a statement, “and we will not tolerate any sort of carelessness and inattentiveness that might give the public cause to doubt our commitment to the rules.”\nA routine review of telephone records conducted this summer by the IU Athletics Department revealed “evidence that some calls contrary to the sanctions may have been made,” according to a statement released by the department. \nGreenspan then contracted the Collegiate Sports Practice of Indianapolis law firm Ice Miller to investigate the situation. The two-month review revealed the violations.\nPer NCAA bylaws, member institutions are responsible for investigating, self-reporting and self-sanctioning violations that occur. The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions can sanction further if it deems appropriate, though Grace Calhoun, IU’s assistant athletics director for student development and compliance, did not believe that was likely.\n“We certainly have been advised by Ice Miller and others that our sanctions are quite severe for the problems that were identified,” Calhoun said. “So we feel very comfortable that we have imposed severe sanctions.”\nThe department submitted Ice Miller’s report about the impermissible three-way phone calls to the NCAA’s infractions committee, and is preparing another report about the 35 excessive phone calls.\nGreenspan said they considered a variety of punishments, and there is language in Sampson’s contract that allows for his termination if severe NCAA violations occur. After consulting a variety of individuals, including representatives from Ice Miller and McRobbie, they determined the sanctions were fitting, Greenspan said.\n“We determined that these sanctions will be significant and they will be severe and they will be appropriate,” Greenspan said.\nTrustee Philip Eskew said he fully supported Greenspan’s decision to retain Sampson while imposing sanctions, but he added he was “extremely disappointed.”\n“We received some criticism for hiring a coach that had sanctions, and we were of the opinion that this would not be an issue going forward,” Eskew said. “Unfortunately, we were wrong.”