Yes, blow me IU. I beat Michigan State!
On Thursday and Friday of last week, IU's basketball team was at a low-point. They had just lost a close game to Wisconsin on a banked three, and their coach was all but fired. Yet, miraculously, Sunday morning has brought an entirely different outlook.
Since the infractions were made public on Wednesday, there have numerous interviews on the streets of Bloomington, mostly with students, discussing what the future should hold for Sampson. The majority of these interviews were identical, with almost every person saying that Sampson needs to be fired, because he is supposedly soiling the good name of IU basketball and athletics. However, it was late Saturday night, and these same students who had denounced Sampson merely days earlier, leading the Assembly Hall crowd in a chant of "Kel-vin Samp-son." IU had just embarassed a highly-ranked rival, and all of a sudden this Sampson fella wasn't such a bad guy.
The rapid switch in opinion is not really that surprising if you consider the "win-at-all-costs" attitude at almost every college institution in the country. I'm not implying that this attitude isn't shared by everyone, because if it weren't, UK would have never fired Tubby Smith. I'm also not implying that it is wrong to do such things in order to improve your team's performance, even if you must fire a man of Tubby Smith's integrity. However, IU always talks about how "different" they are. They run a clean program, and a cheater like Sampson should not be coaching the Hoosiers, or so they say.
Unless, of course, he can beat Purdue on Tuesday.
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