Do It For the Sake of the Program

My semester began last week and it has been non-stop. Teaching three different courses on three different days, two of which I’ve never taught any version of before, has been a stressful and hectic endeavor. Some days I enjoy it and some days I’m dead tired and wishing it was over. But at the same time I’m hearing from students in all three classes about how much they’re enjoying themselves, so I guess I’m doing something right.

But that’s why I haven’t had the time to comment on the biggest scandal to hit Indiana University athletics in years. I’d say that it even rivals the firing of Bobby Knight because anyone that was living in Bloomington at the time, such as myself, saw it coming a mile away. But now IU men’s basketball is rocked with controversy and possible NCAA sanctions for the first time since 1960.

And it’s all thanks to Coach Kelvin Sampson.

I just had a feeling that it was a mistake when IU hired him two years ago. He had a history of making illegal telephone calls and NCAA infractions from his days as the coach at the University of Oklahoma. But IU took a chance on him. I now wonder if they’re regretting the hiring.

Today Sampson’s fate will be revealed. If he’s kept on a program that has been noted for it’s clean and fair play will now have a sullied reputation. The IU men’s basketball program will be thought of as cheaters, and that is something that will be difficult to shake. Chants of cheater will be heard from the stands at every away game. Is that what the players need to hear?

I don’t want to take away the fact that the Hoosiers are having a great season, but Sampson is going to end up taking them down. He needs to go. Be it by firing (which all signs are seeming to point to) or resignation, Sampson should no longer be leading this team.

Fire him now in order to save IU men’s basketball in the long run.

NBA Eligibility - Hurting the College Game?

This past fall semester I taught a course that examined the role of sports in the media. One day I talked a bit about eligibility rules and what someone has to do to become a professional athlete. I found it interesting that the current rules for the NBA

states that in order to be eligible to play you must be 19 years old and one year removed from high school.

But then this got me to thinking if this is good for college basketball. What this means is that players, if they want to keep playing while waiting to be eligible, must play 1 year college basketball but then can leave and declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft. For some reason this didn’t sit to well with me.

Fast forward to today. As many of you know I am a three-peater from Indiana University. I received my B.A., my M.A., and my Ph.D. degrees from that great institution. During my time there I couldn’t help but be a huge basketball fan. I was there during the firing of Bobby Knight, the ups and downs of Mike Davis, from making the NCAA final to not even making the tournament, and the start of the Kelvin Sampson era. Even though I am only five months removed from living in Bloomington I’m still an avid follower of their men’s and women’s basketball teams.

This year the Hoosiers’ men’s team has one of the greatest line-ups in many, many years. Currently they have an overall record of 16-1 and are ranked 7^th on the Associate Press poll and 8^th on the ESPN/USA Today poll. This is thanks in part to the one-two punch of senior D.J. White and freshman Eric Gordon. And it is Gordon that got me thinking again about eligibility requirements for the NBA.

Eric Gordon is currently averaging 22.4 points and 3.3 rebounds per game. He is without a doubt one of the hottest freshmen in the college game today. But will he see a sophomore season?

Eric Gordon is good enough to enter the NBA draft after this college hoops season. I even believe that once he does so it is very likely that he will be snapped up by a pro team. But where does this leave the Hoosiers? After one year of success they are left to rebuild yet again.

Now it is the responsibility of the coaches to recruit the best possible players. (But don’t get me started on Sampson and recruiting due to his violations over the years.) But how can a coach cultivate a championship team if the best players are only putting their time in for one year while waiting to be eligible for the NBA? What does this do to the college game overall?

NBA Commissioner David J. Stern has said that it is best for these players to gain another year of maturity and another year of experience before coming to the NBA. Their only chance to really get this experience is the college game. But does it really benefit the players? The NBA? The college basketball programs? In my opinion the NBA needs to go one of two ways with this rule.

One option is to revert to the old rules what allow players join the league out of high school, in essence bypassing the college game and turning pro. This way college teams will not get invested in these players with the hopes that they will stick around for the long run but end up only get them for the short term. The only caveat is that the player must have completed high school.

The other option I believe that the NBA has is to follow the model of the WNBA. In order for a player to be eligible for the WNBA draft she must be either at least 21 years old or have completed her college eligibility. By waiting until they are 21 most players will have played basketball through their junior year. This allows coaches and teams to build year-to-year and make great runs at the NCAA championship. It isn’t the same as having players stay all four years, but I do believe that it is a better option than having them play only one year and leave.

Any thoughts?

Home vs. Away

Indiana University is a basketball school. It’s the home of the Hoosiers. It’s where Bobby Knight made a name for himself (both good and bad). It’s a place where a good number of undergraduates enroll only because of the basketball team’s reputation.

I’ve been in Indiana now for nearly 10 years. I was here at the tail end of Bobby Knight’s tenure, at a time when he was losing as much as he was winning. I was also here for all of the Mike Davis years, which had a lot of bad (missing the NCAA men’s tournament, missing any postseason play) and some good (runner up in the NCAA men’s tournament in 2002). This season is the first with new head coach Kelvin Sampson, and they are finding some success.

Currently the men’s team has a record of 17-8, with a record of 7-5 in Big Ten division play. All of the team’s losses this season have been games played away from Bloomington.

That got me wondering. How can a team play so well at home but lose 2/3 of their games played away? And how can you teach your players to play well away?

If anyone has any ideas about how to do this, I’m ready to listen. And I’m sure the Hoosiers would be too.

Could They Be Sending a Message?

This evening I had the joy of watching the Indiana University men’s basketball team handily defeat Purdue by a score of 85-58. Unfortunately many individuals in the Bloomington and Indianapolis area were not able to see the game on their televisions. The game was carried by ESPNU, a cable network not currently carried in basic cable packages in these areas. In the past this game, as well as other IU basketball games, have been carried in Bloomington on ESPN Plus and aired on the local WB (now CW) affiliate.

I began to wonder why ESPN would not this game between two big rivals available to a wider audience. I can understand that they would like to build ESPNU’s audience, but why do so at the expense of many fans?

Then a friend tonight asked me about the Big Ten Network, which is set to debut in August, 2007. Could the imminent start of this network, and the amount of Big Ten sporting events it will cover, be a reason why ESPN relegated this game to ESPNU?

I did some investigating of the Big Ten Network and discovered that the majority of the network is owned by the Big Ten Conference itself with a minority of the network owned by the Fox Cable Networks. The Big Ten Network will not carry just football and basketball. It will also carry the championship events, classic Big Ten sporting events, coaches’ shows, Olympics events, and academic programming.

I read in the FAQ section for the Big Ten Network how games that will be aired will be chosen. It appears that ABC gets first selection of Saturday afternoon games, CBS gets first selection of weekend men’s basketball games, ESPN has first selection of weekday men’s basketball games, and ESPN on most weekends has second and third selection of football games. The change occurs with the football and men’s basketball games not selected during this process. In the past these games could be picked up by ESPN’s syndication outlet (known as ESPN Regional Television or ESPN Plus). This is why a game such as Indiana vs. Purdue would have appeared on a local station. Now these games will appear on the Big Ten Network.

Did ESPN put this game on ESPNU to bolster this new network’s ratings? Or did they do this to send a message to the impending Big Ten Network, due to their partnership with Fox Sports?