WaitingForNextYear

Kelvin Sampson “Tampering” With OSU Recruits?

The world of recruiting is a lot like the Wild West from the movies. It’s a world dominated by renegades and outlaws. I mentioned the way OSU football recruit Willie Mobley’s mother received a letter from a Jim Tressel imposter urging Mobley not to go to OSU. Well, evidently, football may not be the only sport in which OSU recruits are receiving unwanted communications from representatives of other schools.

I found this little blurb buried in a recent installment of the Columbus Dispatch’s Buckeye Xtra column. In it, Bob Baptist writes,

“When asked last week about the “fly by” handshake he exchanged with Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson after the Hoosiers’ win Feb. 10, Matta said he was bothered by how the Buckeyes played. Really? Besides Sampson’s suspected tampering with OSU commitment DeShaun Thomas of Fort Wayne, Ind., last summer — Big Ten coaches have a “gentlemen’s agreement” not to mess with others’ commitments — the Toledo Blade reported last week that one of the illegal phone calls the NCAA found Sampson to have participated in went to Toledo Libbey guard William Buford last summer. That was almost a year after Buford had committed to Ohio State. Buford told the newspaper that Indiana coaches wanted to know if he was interested in playing at IU. Buford signed with Ohio State in November. Ohio State freshman Evan Turner also was interviewed by the NCAA regarding the case against Sampson.”

The reason why I used the word “tamper” in quotes is because as this paragraph states, gentlemen’s agreements are just that….backroom bindings sealed with one man’s word against another’s. The NCAA does not recognize verbal recruits, and until they sign a Letter Of Intent, they are considered fair game. But what makes this tricky is that the basketball coaches in the Big Ten evidently have this gentlemen’s agreement in place. This is clearly an agreement that doesn’t hold much water with Sampson, however, as Illiniois fans will gladly tell you after Sampson was able to poach freshman sensation Eric Gordon from their grasps last year.

But how does this all tie in to the NCAA violations Sampson is currently being charged with? That seems to be a little more unclear. Was Sampson using his extra phone calls which were supposed to be off limits to him to call OSU recruits Buford and Turner? That seems to be the implications of this article. I don’t want to be one to throw around unfounded rumors, so to be clear, I am not really accusing Sampson of doing anything wrong other than violating a gentleman’s agreement. But just because violating said agreement isn’t a violation of NCAA rules, it doesn’t mean it’s going to gain the respect of his Big Ten peers.

Kelvin Sampson has quickly made two enemies amongst his peers in Thad Matta and Illinois’ Bruce Weber. Adding even more fuel to this fire is the way OSU was slammed with false rumors when Thad Matta landed Greg Oden two years ago. It was said there was NO WAY a school like Ohio State could land a recruit like Oden without “cheating” somehow. And the source of many of these rumors? Bitter Indiana fans who couldn’t fathom that then-coach Mike Davis somehow let a player like Oden go outside the state to a Big Ten rival. But the funny thing is that Thad Matta has never faced the level of NCAA scrutiny that Sampson has both at Oklahoma and now at Indiana. So while I will not take delight in the NCAA issues of other universities, I will not be shedding any tears for them either. Indiana must now lie in the bed they have made.