Sampson Era is Over

To recap:

• Sampson resigns
• Agrees to $750,000 buyout
• Agrees not to sue university
• Dakich will be the interim head coach
• 6 players skip practice today -- DJ White, Armon Bassett, Jordan Crawford, Jamarcus Ellis, DeAndre Thomas, and Brandon McGhee
• Key players that attended practice -- Eric Gordon, Lance Stemler, Kyle Taber, Mike White

What's next:

• Get the players back and on the airplane to play Northwestern tomorrow night. Hopefully, Sampson carries through on the earlier report to talk to the players and urge them to play tomorrow night.
• This year's team now needs to re-focus and finish what they started, which is a very successful season to this point.
• Search for a new coach and hire someone that can win and do it the right way.
• New coach has to re-recruit both current players and incoming recruits.
• IU still has to respond to NCAA allegations and go through the hearing process.
• Wait on the final NCAA ruling.

The immediate question is whether the full team will show up tomorrow morning to head to Evanston? I think they will. I understand that they are very upset right now and don't understand why Sampson couldn't be allowed to coach the rest of the year. But now that this appears to be a done deal, the players have absolutely nothing to gain by not playing. They are in a Big Ten title race and would greatly regret throwing that away if they decide not to play tomorrow night and the team would lose to last-place Northwestern. They are also a team that is a threat to go deep in the tournament and they are not going to give that up.

So, I do think the full team will come back together, but you have to wonder if it will be somewhat of a divided locker room? Again, I don't think so. I think today's practice was just a case where these guys didn't feel that they could go practice while their head coach had his neck on the line and the final decision was expected to come at any minute. I can respect that. Well, I should say that I can respect that as long as they show up tomorrow.

As for the Sampson buyout, I know some you think that IU didn't owe him a single penny, but I like the buyout just from the fact that it is the cleanest break possible. There won't be any lawsuits down the road. There will be plenty of things happening with a new coach and the NCAA hearing.

It's unfortunate because I really liked Sampson and think he is a really good coach, but he screwed up and IU's hands were tied. Obviously, the hope is that this year's team can move on and the program and school can get back to the glory years of being the best, like way back when all of us were there.

There's still the question of how could Sampson let this happen? He's a smart guy. He's a good coach. How could he throw it all away on phone calls to recruits? Well, we may never know for sure, but I think I learned the answer today at work. You see, I had some stuff that I really needed to get done today at work, but I could not stop going to each of the 4 internet browsers that I had open to see if anything new had developed. I literally could not stop myself. I would try to get back to work, but then I would hit refresh just one more time and that cycle would repeat itself.

I think it was the same type of addiction or "couldn't help himself" type thing with Sampson. Some of the first words out of his mouth when he got to IU was something like "Indiana University is a place where you win championships". I think he wanted to win a title so bad and he just would get a feeling of "if I can just land this guy….". I really think he simply could not help himself and created an environment where the assistants acted the same way. Who knows.

I guess I'll stop here since this thing has already been beat to death even before anything official was ever announced, but I'd still be interested in hearing everyone else's thoughts. How does this team move forward? Will they be flat? Or will they be motivated? Or will they even show up, literally? Hell, go ahead and speculate about the next coach, that's always fun.

Go Hoosiers!