The worst column I ever wrote was about Kelvin Sampson.
Or should I say, Calvin"" Sampson?
I misspelled his name and used inaccurate facts to criticize his recruiting history. When I look back on it, it may have been one of the worst columns ever written in the history of journalism.
It was so bad that one blogger wrote: ""If this is what large journalism departments are churning out right now, I'm worried for the quality of sports reporting.""
Yet, the worst column I ever wrote may have been the most true column I ever wrote.
The column was written in October 2006 after Eric Gordon switched his verbal commitment from Illinois to Indiana, but before he signed the dotted line to play for Sampson. The point of the column was to question Sampson's recruiting tactics and criticize his past recruiting mistakes, but it didn't help that I spelled his first name wrong or that I included information saying Memphis was going after Gordon (which I read online and wasn't true).
When you have glaring errors like that, it's easy to miss the point of the column - which was merely that Sampson's history warrants a red flag when a five-star recruit like Gordon suddenly switches from a school that was in the 2005 NCAA championship game to a school that has not one won since 1987.
The truth is that the column shouldn't have been written. What did a journalism student at Wisconsin know about Sampson's recruiting techniques at Indiana?
But that's exactly the point. If I saw the red flags (the same guy who couldn't spell Sampson's first name right), how did Indiana and Athletic Director Rick Greenspan miss them? More importantly, why did Greenspan hire this guy in the first place?
Now let me call a 30-second timeout in the interest of getting my facts straight. No connection has been made between the alleged illegal recruiting calls and Eric Gordon. I'm not saying that he recruited the kid illegally. All I'm saying is that this guy had a questionable history before he was with Indiana and the first major thing he does is pull off one of the most significant and surprising recruiting steals in the last decade.
Red flag.
Greenspan had the opportunity to hire from within, but chose not to. Instead, he hired a guy who was already in trouble after he and his staff made 577 improper recruiting calls at Oklahoma. Five-hundred and fifty-six? That's no mistake - that's a full illegal operation, mafia-style.
Sampson should and will be gone. I would be shocked if last night's game against Purdue was not his last.
But Greenspan should be gone too.Some are arguing that Greenspan should stay because his track record is actually pretty good - IU has won six individual or team national titles since he arrived in 2004, according to the athletic department's website. So what? Roger Clemens won two Cy Young awards before he allegedly started taking Human Growth Hormone.
Greenspan should not have hired Sampson and now Indiana's top athletic program will pay the price as a result - to me, that's grounds for dismissal.
We're talking about a program that has the third most national championships (five) in the history of college basketball. We're talking about a program that has made the NCAA Tournament 32 times - fifth most in NCAA history. We're talking about a program that has won 52 games in those 32 trips - sixth most in NCAA.
Most of all, we're talking about a program that should not be hiring a guy who already has a record of cheating.
Sampson came to Bloomington, Ind., representing everything that Indiana wasn't, but now Indiana is stained with everything that Sampson is.
E-mail Adam at hoge@wisc.edu to talk about where ""Calvin"" will end up next.
