Last week in this space, we took on the confirmed cheater and liar Bruce Pearl. So, today on Wednesday Wizengamot, we want to do the same for University of Houston Head Coach Kelvin Sampson. While his pattern of illicit behavior is not anywhere near the same as Pearl’s history, Sampson put the University of Indiana into a worse position than Pearl put the University of Tennessee—and has been allowed to return.

[Seriously, why is this man even allowed to coach?
And why doesn’t any respectable sports-mediot outlet call him out for what he is??]

All one has to do is read Sampson’s Wikipedia page, which contains 891 words on the scandals with the Hoosiers that resulted in a five-year coaching ban for Sampson at the NCAA level. That’s worse than the three-year ban Pearl got, of course. We don’t need to recount it all, but any situation where a coach “earns” a five-year ban is not a good one. Even Jim Harbaugh only got a four-year ban from the NCAA for his actions.

Yet before the Indiana fiasco, Sampson got in recruiting-violation troubles at the University of Oklahoma: the Sooners were placed under a three-year investigation by the NCAA for recruiting violations, cited for more than 550 impermissible calls made by Sampson and his staff to 17 different recruits. The NCAA barred Sampson from recruiting off campus and making phone calls for one year, ending May 24, 2007.

Sampson now has led the Houston Cougars to the Final Four, joining Pearl and his Auburn Tigers. These are two coaches who are not “leaders of men” and should never be allowed to coach at the collegiate level. Yet here they are: prospering and thriving in the South, despite committing egregious crimes in the eyes of the NCAA. And barely a mediot reporting on the sport brings up the sordid past of either man right now. Sad.

Interestingly enough, only four coaches in the sport ever have been re-hired after getting a coaching show-cause ban, and two of them are now in the Final Four. A third one was one of Sampson’s assistants at Indiana during this whole mess. This is the state of college basketball now: reward the cheaters and the liars. Pearl and Sampson really have no business being in the Final Four with their pasts, and no one cares.

Well, we do. As the infamous Howard Cosell stated, “[We] tell it like it is.” If you don’t like it? Your problem.