Once pariahs, now winners, Final Four coaches Pearl, Sampson a reflection of a changing game
A decade ago, Bruce Pearl of Auburn and Kelvin Sampson of Houston were looking to resurrect their careers after being handed show-cause penalties by the NCAA for recruiting violations
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A decade ago, Bruce Pearl of Auburn and Kelvin Sampson of Houston were emerging from exile — two coaches who had been handed the harshest sanction imaginable by the NCAA and were looking to resurrect their once-successful careers.
This week, they're both coaching at the Final Four, the “show-cause” penalties that once stood as a scarlet letter in college sports now barely visible in their rearview mirrors.
Their ascension from pariahs to the cusp of a championship — Auburn plays Florida in one semifinal Saturday, while Houston faces Duke in the other — look different, but no less impressive when viewed through the lens of the shifting priorities that have overtaken college sports over the last four years.
The recruiting misdeeds that nearly submarined their careers seem almost quaint now in a cash-saturated world of name, image, likeness endorsement deals for players who can move around as freely as the coaches while the coaches worry as much about what the schools can pay them as the players they recruit.
“I can make a case that it’s easier if you have the funds to compete at the NIL level,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes told The Associated Press recently. “If you don’t, it makes it really difficult. I think that’s where administrators have to realize: Are we giving coaches what they need to be at the level we want to?’”
There's nothing new about the college coaching carousel kicking into full swing this time of year. What's unusual about 2025 is the nature of some of the moves.
Five high-profile changes were made by coaches who won at least a game in March Madness. That was two more than last year, four more than in 2023 and two more than 2019, two years before NIL started.
But while virtually all those moves were seen as steps up for the coaches taking new jobs — nobody blinked when, say, Dusty May went from Florida Atlantic to Michigan or Nate Oats left Buffalo for Alabama — this year seems different.
In a move dripping with recriminations, bad feelings and a departing athletic director, Kevin Willard left a Power Four school at Maryland to coach a non-P4 school, albeit one with a better hoops resume, at Villanova. The next domino had Buzz Williams departing the SEC and the Texas A&M program he built to fill the opening at Maryland.
One of the more traditional moves involved Will Wade, also a show-cause casualty from a now seemingly bygone era, parlaying success at McNeese to return to the big time, at North Carolina State of the ACC.
Wade's involvement in paying for recruits cost him his job at LSU and wrapped him in an FBI investigation that sent coaches to jail and, he said, “ruined a lot of people's lives for very little reason.” That none of what he did would be considered wrong in today's world of above-the-table NIL payments to players is no excuse for him, he said.
“It wasn’t right to do then and, you know, I paid for it," Wade told the AP after his hiring at NC State.
The stumbling blocks for both Sampson and Pearl also had to do with recruiting.
Sampson made too many phone calls to a player who had already given verbal commitments to another school. Pearl invited a recruit to a barbecue at his house, then lied about it.
Decades before that, Pearl was an assistant at Iowa when he recorded a call in which he asked a player, Deon Thomas, if an Illinois assistant had offered him a car as a recruiting enticement. Pearl didn't get in trouble for that one, though his reputation suffered and it took him nearly 15 years before he'd get another chance in the big time.
All that feels antiquated these days, when headlines about Duke's Cooper Flagg making $4.8 million or BYU star recruit AJ Dybantsa making $7 million in NIL raise eyebrows not because it's against the rules, but simply because it lays out the vastly different stakes involved in college sports.
Pearl and Sampson are creatures of basketball at schools and conferences that need football to succeed. Neither of their athletic departments could be blamed for pushing their NIL resources heavily in the direction of the sport that produces the most revenue.
Pearl remains confident that the Southeastern Conference, which placed a record 14 teams in March Madness this year, is on solid footing.
“I’m sure in the SEC we’re going to be committed to being excellent in everything across the board — men, women, all sports,” Pearl said, while acknowledging the reality that the rulebook for this new era is still being written.
Even with the Big 12's perennial success in basketball — the conference has had a Final Four team in seven of the past 10 seasons — Houston still has strides to make with a football program that went 4-8 last year. The question there, and many other places, is whether the Cougars have the resources to rebuild football while staying great at hoops.
“If one school decides to give 70% of its money to football, another school decides to give 75% to football, that 5% is a big number,” UMass coach Frank Martin said of the calculations driving athletic department, coaches and players these days. “We all want to be in a fair game. It'd be like asking one team to play in the NCAA Tournament with four players, instead of five.”
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AP Sports Writers Teresa Walker and Aaron Beard contributed.
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