Indiana buyouts add up

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana University has paid more than $4 million since 2000 to coaches and athletic department administrators after they left the school, The Indianapolis Star reported Sunday.

One college sports expert said IU’s most recent buyout – $750,000 to former men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson – shows that college athletics have “spun totally out of control.”

The Star reported Sunday that Sampson’s buyout, which IU agreed to Friday, brings to $4,012,000 the sum that IU has paid out to former athletic department personnel since 2000.

Former Athletic Director Michael McNeely received $839,000 from IU, and former men’s basketball coach Mike Davis got $800,000. Former football coach Gerry DiNardo received $616,000, former football coach Cam Cameron got $498,000, and former men’s basketball coach Bob Knight received $283,000.

Five other former athletics department staff members collected another $226,000.

Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor and one of the nation’s leading experts on sports economics, said the payments are another sign of how far removed college sports are from the rest of the university.

“This whole thing has spun totally out of control,” he said. “The economic parameters are way off.”

Sampson’s payout would cover tuition for 95 in-state IU students this school year.

Yet compared with the buyouts of some other schools’ coaches, IU got off cheap.

In 2006, Alabama paid $4 million to buy out the contract of football coach Mike Shula. That same year, Minnesota paid a combined $4.9 million to say goodbye to football coach Glen Mason and men’s basketball coach Dan Monson.

Zimbalist said IU’s buyout of Sampson is troubling in light of the alleged violations.

“I think it’s downright outrageous that people can violate NCAA rules left and right and then walk out with $750,000,” he said. “Elsewhere, when you violate the law or the rules, you go to jail or pay a fine.”