Forever redeemable

Dialed up a little college buckets on the tube the other day, and there was Kelvin Sampson, basking in the glow again. The broadcast team was talking about what a great job he's done at the University of Houston, which is ranked sixth in the nation right now. They traced his coaching roots from Washington State to Oklahoma to Indiana to Houston, and you know what was remarkable about that?

Not once did anyone mention the shenanigans that got OU in hot water while he was there.

Nor did anyone mention the same sort of shenanigans that got him fired at IU, and that left a proud program in pieces for Tom Crean to pick up.

This is because the redemptive powers of winning are rarely more redeeming than they are in college basketball, where a guy can get away with pretty much anything so long as he hangs the occasional banner in Corporate Benefactor Arena and doesn't turn his hoops facility into a brothel (See: Rick Pitino). Other than that, you can be as sketchy as you want.

Case in point: The University of Arizona.

Where the head coach of one of the sketchiest programs in college hoops is still the head coach, even though his university just went into cringe mode because of shenanigans that have happened on his watch.

In October ESPN and The Athletic reported that the NCAA whacked 'Zona with nine rules violations, including five Level I infractions. All of it stemmed from the 2017 federal investigation into corruption in college basketball, in which a former Arizona assistant pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to commit bribery  accused of accepting $20,000 from a wannabe sports agent to steer Arizona players his way.

Along the way, the assistant was caught on a wiretap telling the agent that Arizona head coach Sean Miller was slipping former player Deandre Ayton a $10,000-a-month handshake. Miller of course denied this.

Then came Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Arizona announced it was self-imposing a one-year postseason ban in response to the NCAA charges. The statement from the school said the decision acknowledged that there had been "serious lapses in judgment and a departure from the University's expectation of fair and ethical behavior" on the part of "certain former members of the MBB staff."

Of course, it said nothing about the guy under whom the serious lapses occurred. And who, again, still has his job.

That would be, again, Sean Miller. 

Who was tagged by the NCAA with failure of head coach control, but who has won 292 games in 12 seasons in Tucson, with three Pac-12 Tournament and five regular season titles and three conference Coach of the Year titles. And whose Wildcats are off to a 7-1 start this season.

Just in case you were wondering why he still has his job.

He still has his job for the same reason Kelvin Sampson is riding high at Houston now and Rick Pitino is back in the saddle at Iona, and Bruce Pearl, bounced from Tennessee for his own shenanigans, is still in the SEC at Auburn -- even though the school has self-imposed its own postseason ban in response to NCAA charges against Pearl's program.

It's because they can coach. It's because of those 292 victories at Arizona and Sampson's  637 victories in 31 seasons, and the 131 wins, two SEC titles and Final Four appearance Pearl has produced in seven seasons at Auburn.

The rest of it?

Why, take it from that broadcast team.

It's not worth mentioning.