- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 423,892
- Reaction score
- 43
SAN ANTONIO – The best part of watching Houston come to the cusp of a national title is how everything about their story feels like it comes straight out of a time capsule.
It’s a 69-year-old coach who mocks the idea of having a general manager, who tells meandering stories about sleeping in bunk beds as a counselor at Jud Heathcote’s basketball camp, who only took the job at Houston because they didn’t have a nepotism policy that prevented him from hiring his son and daughter to help run the program.
It’s a core of players who mostly started with Kelvin Sampson when they were 17 or 18, eschewed the transfer portal churn and stuck to the plan of development over dollars.
It’s a culture built by the simplest drills like one Sampson was asked about, where a ball hits the floor and two players do whatever is necessary – bruises and scratches be damned – to see who comes up with it first.
Heck, even the scandal that changed the course of Sampson’s career and put him on a trajectory toward Houston feels like a museum artifact from a different planet, something so foreign it almost seems like a parody.
“When you’re pressing 70, you look at things a lot differently,” Sampson said Sunday, a little more than 24 hours before his Cougars will play Florida for the NCAA men’s basketball national title. “Over the years, things kind of come full circle in some ways.”
How’s this for full circle?
Shortly after Monday night’s championship game ends, the winning coach will receive a trophy from NCAA president Charlie Baker, who will have spent much of his day monitoring a courtroom hearing in San Francisco, where a judge will review a settlement that allows schools to directly pay their athletes a share of the billions this enterprise generates. And the reason Baker might be handing that trophy to Houston is because 17 years ago, Sampson was fired from Indiana and banished from college basketball because he made too many phone calls to recruits.
That’s not to absolve Sampson of responsibility for what happened. The rules back then were what they were, the school responded the way schools usually responded in that era of sports, Sampson paid the price and eventually came back to college a better coach after six years as an assistant in the NBA.
The point is that it frames just how much college sports have changed, almost to the point of being unrecognizable in some ways from the period earlier in his career when it seemed like Sampson might be on his way to a national championship. And now that Sampson is here, as close to that Holy Grail as he’s ever been, it feels in so many ways like it’s because he is one of the few people who hasn't really changed that much.
In a world of Apples and Amazons, Houston is like the only mom-and-pop store in town that could figure out how to stay in business.
“I used to come to this tournament when I was a young coach, and I’d sit in those stands and look at the two coaches in the championship game,” he said. “You think you’d like to be there one day, if you could ever get a chance. So for me, it’s a lot of gratitude, a lot of appreciation for having this opportunity.
"But you owe it to so many people. I’ve got a great team, a great staff. I’m able to work independent of everything. I run the program without any resistance. I make all the decisions. We’ve kind of done it our way. It’s worked out pretty good.”
It’s important to understand that not every administration would hire a coach like Sampson and allow him to make his son, Kellen, the top assistant and his daughter, Lauren, the director of basketball operations. Not every coach would trust his ability to evaluate players like J’Won Roberts and Emanuel Sharp, who needed years of development to fully maximize the attributes that Sampson saw in them before most others did. And not every athlete, especially in the current environment, would submit to the kind of culture at Houston that demands relentless, almost superhuman effort to play their style while passing up opportunities for more money or responsibility in the current free-for-all so many programs are grappling with.
“We’re not the same as other programs, you know?” Sharp said. “We’ve got a culture that not many guys want to leave. We win a lot every year, and we’re always in position to be a great team because of the coaching staff and how we work every day. The grass isn’t always greener, so not a lot of guys leave here.”
Don’t get it twisted: If you’re looking for a Cinderella story, this isn’t it. The Cougars aren’t a bunch of one-star recruits and they aren’t playing for free. If there’s a championship celebration on Monday night, a billionaire booster named Tilman Fertitta (who also owns the Houston Rockets) will be right in the middle of it. Largely because of his investments, Houston has a state-of-the-art arena and practice facility and all the resources it needs to compete in the Big 12.
But there is an essential quality about Houston that feels like it’s from a different time.
Maybe it’s because most of Sampson’s contemporaries have either retired or been driven out of the game in frustration over how much the balance of power in college sports has shifted toward the athletes. Maybe it’s because Houston’s roster is mostly driven by players – whether they became stars or settled into lesser roles – who have been there four, five or even six years and never looked for a way out. Maybe it’s because when you watch Houston play, you can’t help but think that their practices are old-school, physical wars of attrition because of how good they are at the basic stuff that requires tremendous effort.
“Everything is a competition,” Sampson said earlier this week. “Like our kids say, it's not for everybody, but it is for the ones that are here.”
That’s not to say anyone else is doing it the wrong way. Florida has a completely different approach: A 39-year-old head coach, a team full of transfers, a coaching staff obsessed with numbers and analytics. That might well be the formula to win a national championship this year. It certainly seems like where the game is headed.
Sampson has made some concessions, too. Two Houston starters, L.J. Cryer and Milos Uzan, came out of the transfer portal. Why fight against those currents?
What’s more important is that Sampson does it his way, with his people. Most of his staff, in fact, has been together for 10-plus years including two guys, Hollis Price and Quannas White, who played on his Final Four team at Oklahoma back in 2002.
“It’s super family-oriented,” said Uzan, who came to Houston this year from Oklahoma. “It’s a different type of vibe here. You can tell, too. His son, his daughter works here. Karen (his wife) is always around. It’s special.”
No matter what happens Monday, college basketball is only going to get more corporate and transactional in the coming years. Assuming the House settlement gets approved, which essentially installs a salary cap for athletic departments, any notion of amateurism will be completely dead. The relationship among players, schools and coaches will never quite be the same.
But Sampson is going to keep doing what he’s doing, for as long as he can do it. And if this Houston team can win this title as this era becomes fully professionalized, it’ll be remembered forever as a relic of those days when culture mattered more than contracts.
“How you do anything is how you do everything, right?” he said. “Being on time, treating people with respect, having the right attitude every day, giving great effort every day in whatever it is you're asked to do. Our kids are pretty good at that.”
Maybe good enough to call themselves champions.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Houston's Kelvin Sampson, team are reminders of a disappearing era
Continue reading...
It’s a 69-year-old coach who mocks the idea of having a general manager, who tells meandering stories about sleeping in bunk beds as a counselor at Jud Heathcote’s basketball camp, who only took the job at Houston because they didn’t have a nepotism policy that prevented him from hiring his son and daughter to help run the program.
It’s a core of players who mostly started with Kelvin Sampson when they were 17 or 18, eschewed the transfer portal churn and stuck to the plan of development over dollars.
It’s a culture built by the simplest drills like one Sampson was asked about, where a ball hits the floor and two players do whatever is necessary – bruises and scratches be damned – to see who comes up with it first.
Heck, even the scandal that changed the course of Sampson’s career and put him on a trajectory toward Houston feels like a museum artifact from a different planet, something so foreign it almost seems like a parody.
“When you’re pressing 70, you look at things a lot differently,” Sampson said Sunday, a little more than 24 hours before his Cougars will play Florida for the NCAA men’s basketball national title. “Over the years, things kind of come full circle in some ways.”
How’s this for full circle?
Shortly after Monday night’s championship game ends, the winning coach will receive a trophy from NCAA president Charlie Baker, who will have spent much of his day monitoring a courtroom hearing in San Francisco, where a judge will review a settlement that allows schools to directly pay their athletes a share of the billions this enterprise generates. And the reason Baker might be handing that trophy to Houston is because 17 years ago, Sampson was fired from Indiana and banished from college basketball because he made too many phone calls to recruits.
That’s not to absolve Sampson of responsibility for what happened. The rules back then were what they were, the school responded the way schools usually responded in that era of sports, Sampson paid the price and eventually came back to college a better coach after six years as an assistant in the NBA.
The point is that it frames just how much college sports have changed, almost to the point of being unrecognizable in some ways from the period earlier in his career when it seemed like Sampson might be on his way to a national championship. And now that Sampson is here, as close to that Holy Grail as he’s ever been, it feels in so many ways like it’s because he is one of the few people who hasn't really changed that much.
In a world of Apples and Amazons, Houston is like the only mom-and-pop store in town that could figure out how to stay in business.
You must be registered for see images
“I used to come to this tournament when I was a young coach, and I’d sit in those stands and look at the two coaches in the championship game,” he said. “You think you’d like to be there one day, if you could ever get a chance. So for me, it’s a lot of gratitude, a lot of appreciation for having this opportunity.
"But you owe it to so many people. I’ve got a great team, a great staff. I’m able to work independent of everything. I run the program without any resistance. I make all the decisions. We’ve kind of done it our way. It’s worked out pretty good.”
It’s important to understand that not every administration would hire a coach like Sampson and allow him to make his son, Kellen, the top assistant and his daughter, Lauren, the director of basketball operations. Not every coach would trust his ability to evaluate players like J’Won Roberts and Emanuel Sharp, who needed years of development to fully maximize the attributes that Sampson saw in them before most others did. And not every athlete, especially in the current environment, would submit to the kind of culture at Houston that demands relentless, almost superhuman effort to play their style while passing up opportunities for more money or responsibility in the current free-for-all so many programs are grappling with.
“We’re not the same as other programs, you know?” Sharp said. “We’ve got a culture that not many guys want to leave. We win a lot every year, and we’re always in position to be a great team because of the coaching staff and how we work every day. The grass isn’t always greener, so not a lot of guys leave here.”
Don’t get it twisted: If you’re looking for a Cinderella story, this isn’t it. The Cougars aren’t a bunch of one-star recruits and they aren’t playing for free. If there’s a championship celebration on Monday night, a billionaire booster named Tilman Fertitta (who also owns the Houston Rockets) will be right in the middle of it. Largely because of his investments, Houston has a state-of-the-art arena and practice facility and all the resources it needs to compete in the Big 12.
But there is an essential quality about Houston that feels like it’s from a different time.
Maybe it’s because most of Sampson’s contemporaries have either retired or been driven out of the game in frustration over how much the balance of power in college sports has shifted toward the athletes. Maybe it’s because Houston’s roster is mostly driven by players – whether they became stars or settled into lesser roles – who have been there four, five or even six years and never looked for a way out. Maybe it’s because when you watch Houston play, you can’t help but think that their practices are old-school, physical wars of attrition because of how good they are at the basic stuff that requires tremendous effort.
“Everything is a competition,” Sampson said earlier this week. “Like our kids say, it's not for everybody, but it is for the ones that are here.”
That’s not to say anyone else is doing it the wrong way. Florida has a completely different approach: A 39-year-old head coach, a team full of transfers, a coaching staff obsessed with numbers and analytics. That might well be the formula to win a national championship this year. It certainly seems like where the game is headed.
Sampson has made some concessions, too. Two Houston starters, L.J. Cryer and Milos Uzan, came out of the transfer portal. Why fight against those currents?
What’s more important is that Sampson does it his way, with his people. Most of his staff, in fact, has been together for 10-plus years including two guys, Hollis Price and Quannas White, who played on his Final Four team at Oklahoma back in 2002.
“It’s super family-oriented,” said Uzan, who came to Houston this year from Oklahoma. “It’s a different type of vibe here. You can tell, too. His son, his daughter works here. Karen (his wife) is always around. It’s special.”
No matter what happens Monday, college basketball is only going to get more corporate and transactional in the coming years. Assuming the House settlement gets approved, which essentially installs a salary cap for athletic departments, any notion of amateurism will be completely dead. The relationship among players, schools and coaches will never quite be the same.
But Sampson is going to keep doing what he’s doing, for as long as he can do it. And if this Houston team can win this title as this era becomes fully professionalized, it’ll be remembered forever as a relic of those days when culture mattered more than contracts.
“How you do anything is how you do everything, right?” he said. “Being on time, treating people with respect, having the right attitude every day, giving great effort every day in whatever it is you're asked to do. Our kids are pretty good at that.”
Maybe good enough to call themselves champions.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Houston's Kelvin Sampson, team are reminders of a disappearing era
Continue reading...
