College basketball’s 30 biggest cheaters that tainted the game

7. Kelvin Sampson

There are many great college coaches who will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means skirting the rules in order to do so. One of the most prominent examples of this is Kelvin Sampson, who managed to get himself into hot water with the NCAA at two high-profile jobs.

Sampson made a name for himself at the University of Oklahoma, where he took the Sooners to nine NCAA Tournaments, including an Elite Eight appearance in 2003. That success helped Sampson land the head coaching job at Indiana, but he left the Sooners to sit through a three-year NCAA investigation over some of his questionable recruiting practices.

That behavior carried over to Indiana, where Sampson got himself into more hot water over his tactics. The NCAA’s investigation into Sampson at Oklahoma revealed he had conducted more than 550 illegal phone calls over that period, leading to a ban on off-campus recruiting and calls for Sampson at Indiana.

Sampson paid no mind to the ban, participating in conference calls and letting one of his assistants make 35 impermissible phone calls from his home. Indiana launched its own investigation into Sampson, and the NCAA told the school that Sampson had committed five major rules violations.

Indiana was hit with three years of probation for the violations Sampson committed, and he was fired in 2008. Sampson was also given a five-year show-cause penalty, essentially blackballing him from college basketball until 2014, when he was hired as the head coach at Houston.