With a vast swath of the pundit class bleating the name of Eric Gordon and installing his one year affiliation Hoosiers as conference heavies, the stench emanating from the program continues unabated. With an inevitability that Hoopraker foresaw from the moment of his coronation by Rick Greenspan, Kelvin The Recidivist continues to shepherd the program towards the outlaw margins.
The crack bust of his point guard of the future, Bud Mackey, and this week’s news about his and his staff’s incorrigible dialing habits shouldn’t be surprising to anyone not shuffling with the livestock.
While there are a few commentators close to the program, here and here, who seem to have located their moral jockstraps, it is abundantly and inexcusably clear Greenspan and IU president Michael McRobbie are still warmly ensconced in the pro-Kelvin, win at any cost herd. The institutional response has been to spare the rod in favor of the feather duster.
Surrendering one scholarship and putting a one year delay on a scheduled raise are soft music indeed, especially to a two-time loser whose alienation from right conduct is clearly pathological. But to expect anything more from the same enablers who determined only a short year ago that Sampson was just the shepherd for a program that hadn’t been found in violation of any significant NCAA rule since 1960 is to have faith where none is justified.
Alas, while Greenspan and McRobbie follow their delinquent hire into the shadows, all three hoping the Eric Gordon show will be a heavy enough cologne to mask the stink of it all, one can only hope the NCAA’s response is appropriately harsh enough to force their hand. If the NCAA imposes a harsh enough sentence, perhaps only then will they locate their integrity and take leave of the man who is, in dramatically short order, undoing four decades of propriety.
Of course, it is more likely that the NCAA’s response will not be punitive enough to catalyze such a redemption for Greenspan, McRobbie, and the IU basketball program. And maybe Eric Gordon will be enough balm to cover all sins, at least for the season at hand. But, as this week’s developments, the Bud Mackey recruitment, and Sampson’s Oklahoma rap sheet suggest, IU will either get wise before it is too late or continue to follow their head coach all the way to the brink.
“It’s not the end of the world or the end of the program. I think it’s one of those ugly coincidences,” he said. “These were not violations of any kind of moral turpitude and I think we should put it behind us because we’re going to have a good season.”–Patrick Shoulders, Vice President, Indiana University Board of Trustees
The preceding statement speaks, sadly, to the level of denial, rationalization, and cowardice currently in residence in Bloomington. It is unfortunate that Mr. Shoulders and colleagues need be reminded that Eric Gordon and this season’s win total will be fast-drying ephemeras whereas the damages to the program’s reputation will echo and linger. Absent honor and integrity, success is a hollow, cheap thing.
Left by DJ Elsass on October 17th, 2007