Two simple choices

This stinks rotten, no matter how you look at it.

As I read these scores of pages – both of the NCAA’s exhibits in the failure to monitor allegation and the University’s response – one thing becomes increasingly clear: I can’t tell exactly who is lying – though I have a pretty good idea – but there ain’t nobody telling the truth.

The departed half of this shotgunned wedding, Kelvin Sampson produced on Tuesday a statement stringently denying IU’s response, which basically said Sampson and his staff lied their pants off and IU shouldn’t be held responsible for that.

“In no way did I ever hide or withhold information from Indiana University’s compliance department,” Sampson decried – through his publicist. “I vehemently deny the inference that I made and concealed impermissible calls.”

I don’t believe you. No frills, no bells or whistles. I don’t believe you from word one.

You know what I think, Kelvin? I think from the beginning, you knew exactly what you were going to do, how you were going to do it and who would get to fall on the sword if and when you got caught.

Shall I count the ways?

Of the 117 impermissible phone calls which took place between May 2, 2006, and July 17, 2007 – calls you claim you had no clue weren’t on the up-and-up, just to be clear – and 37 subsequent NCAA violations, the following occurred:

• Starting with the obvious, every call violated the terms of your sanctions.

• 45 of the 117 impermissible calls came from coaches’ home phones, which you and your staff claimed you were not using for recruiting purposes and, therefore, were not obligated to report on your monthly call sheets.

• In May 2007 alone, former assistant coach Rob Senderoff made all 15 of the month’s impermissible phone calls – from his home. Thirteen of them were NCAA violations.

• Several of these flagrant missteps got both the bucket – breaking the sanctions – and the foul – violating NCAA rules. Hell, between May 2 and May 30 of 2006, Senderoff called now-Illinois guard Demetri McCamey four times, when you technically weren’t allowed to call him for two months after the May 2 call. I should also mention he was a junior at the time, so contacting him twice in one month was an NCAA violation anyway.

• On the night of May 23, weeks after you took over and promised to do things the “right” way, Senderoff called Marcus and Markieff Morris’ mother, then each brother twice over the course of almost two hours. Should we go over again what “doing it the right way” means? It clearly isn’t taking.

The evidence provided by the NCAA is somewhere between easily convincing and downright damning. No, it doesn’t have your name on it, Kelvin, but then again, these things never do.

So we’re back to this, we’ve come full circle again to perhaps the most dangerous question of your career and the most damaging to IU basketball since, “Did Bobby Knight actually squeeze?”

In your defense, you’ve said before that you had no idea what was happening, that at no time were you truly “lying” to anyone.

Well then, Kelvin, you have the same two options you’ve always had: Either you were ignorant of repeatedly flagrant and illegal actions taken by the people who work directly under you, or you were not and they were operating at your bidding and command.

You are either lying, or you are stupid.

Pick one.

See you next Thursday.