Operator, won't you help me place this call (since according to NCAA rules, I can't)

Dear Kelvin Sampson:

What the hell were you thinking?

You did an ok job at Oklahoma. Sure, you went to a Final Four, but more often than not your team flamed out in the NCAA tourney. You really never developed any superstar players. Some successful coaches might see that as a badge of honor, I see it as a sign that you only get the bare minimum out of your most talented players. And just when your Oklahoma program was about to descend into oblivion alongside the Missouri Tigers, just when Bob Huggins, Bob Knight, and Billy Gillespie were going to join KU, OSU, and Texas and supplant your team in the upper half of the Big 12, out of nowhere a big crimson parachute found you and took you to Bloomington, Indiana. Oh sure, a lot of the fans noticed the warning signs I just laid out, they saw right though your passion and your self-proclaimed ability to recruit and decided you were a mediocre hire.

But it was your job, you had a position at a top 10 program, congrats.

But not everything was going perfectly for you, the big bad NCAA was coming after you. Apparently, you cannot stay off the phone. You love phone like a junkie loves their smack. You were told to lay off the phone and you could not. You left the good folks in Oklahoma saddled with NCAA violations and your also decided to saddle your new employers with problems as well.

But those problems proved to be little more than a distraction and a punch line during most of your first year in Bloomington. You started winning. The IU fans took to your team, and best of all you pulled the wool over Bruce Weber's eyes and "stole" Indiana's own Eric Gordon from the Illini. Who cared that a bunch of orange-clad, Indian hating crybabies got their panties in a bunch- you did nothing wrong, you just basically stole the girl after she told you she loved you more than that jerk, anyways. What's wrong with that?

You beat Wisconsin, you finished 3rd in a weak Big 10 (after the top 2) and your team appeared to try hard. Then you made it to the second round of the NCAA and lost a close one to UCLA. Not a bad year.

But as we found out over the weekend, the addict inside of you was present all year long. You couldn't kick the habit. You had to make your precious phone calls. Oh, like most addicts you absolved yourself "who is it hurting?" "I'm not doing anything wrong" "I'm smart enough, I wont get caught"

You sought to bend the rules- you couldn't make outbound CALLS, so you sent text messages, you couldnt MAKE outbound calls, so you had your assistants do that and then patch you in. You cheated. And you knew the NCAA and IU would be watching.

Kelvin, I know this is a long letter and you probably want to know what my point (besides taking a swipe at Illinois fans) is? Well, my point is this: how stupid are you? Did you think you weren't going to get caught? Did you really think you were doing nothing wrong? Did you not think that once you did get caught that everyone else in the midwest who already did not like you would crucify you? Did you not expect local writers who went after Sir Robert Knight to easly go after you?

And, are you really expecting the NCAA to not throw the book at you right now?

$550,000 and a scholarship or two are going to seem like a bargin to what I am sure the pinstripes in downtown Indy want to do to you right now. Do you realize that if you do this again you'll be joining Todd Bozeman (remember him?) in the MEAC?

Kelvin, I think you are a better basketball coach than I always gave you credit for. But you're either an addict or an idiot, and you better hope that this is it, or else your next job is going to be in front of 800 fans in a gym in Eastern North Carolina.