That to me this is a big 'what if' in Indiana Basketball lore. Maybe right up there with had Scott May not broken his arm in '75. Had he been able to keep his nose clean, I think he would have overseen at least a decade or two of IU Basketball being consistently on the level of the other blue blood programs. Probably would have thrown in at least a couple Final Fours and a Championship too.
The show cause he got hit with made it impossible to keep him here. But I'd be willing to bet that IU, had it been so inclined, could've pleaded to the NCAA to keep that from happening and kept Sampson here under the other sanctions.
It's hard to imagine any of that happening. And I'm not even necessarily saying that IU should've tried to do that. They screwed up by assuming Sampson had learned his lesson at Oklahoma and wouldn't be so stupid as to do it again.
The bigger problem with it is that the whole experience kept the IU brass in the straight-jacket. By that I mean...a guy like Bruce Pearl (or even Chris Beard) would be a non-starter. Why? Well, because of the Kelvin Sampson experience.
If they ever decide they want to value winning over hanging on to the old IU culture, they could do it. It's right there waiting to happen. But I don't think they ever will.
They'd rather be a mediocre has-been with great history than hire a guy like Auburn hired to turn them into a top 5 team.
