First it was Kelvin Sampson’s 577 impermissible phone calls made between 2000 and 2004 while coaching at Oklahoma.
Then Sampson violated telephone recruiting restrictions – brought on by those 577 calls – when he and assistant Rob Senderoff made approximately 100 impermissible phone calls to recruits. The school’s initial response contended those were secondary violations.
Now, it’s come out that Sampson lied about the violations to Indiana and the NCAA. In an NCAA report, Sampson is accused of five major violations and failed “to deport himself ... with the generally recognized high standard of honesty.”
(Click here for a timeline of the allegations and here for a pdf of the NCAA’s report.)
In short, the NCAA isn’t happy with Sampson or the school.
Indiana has until May 8 to provide a written response to the report and will be required to appear on June 14 at a Division I infractions committee hearing.
A cynic would note that the No. 13 Hoosiers (20-3) are enjoying their best season in years and, with stars D.J. White and Eric Gordon, are primed for their first Final Four since 2002. So any action before the season ends is unlikely. (And, even if one wasn’t a cynic, the school has until May 8 to provide its response, which makes it unlikely anyway.)
Would a Final Four – or a national championship – keep Sampson in Bloomington despite major violations and being dishonest? According to his contract, the school can fire him for "just cause."
From the Indianapolis Star:
Among the definitions of "just cause" in Sampson's contract is "a significant, intentional, repetitive violation of any law, rule (or) regulation" of the NCAA.
Another definition is "Failure to maintain an environment in which the coaching staff complies with NCAA ... regulations."
The contract says IU is allowed to use its "sole judgment" to determine if Sampson's conduct "reflects adversely upon the university and its athletic program."
Dragging a school through this type of situation doesn't do much for its reputation, which makes me think Sampson keeping his job is doubtful.
The only thing that would let Sampson stay on is if the allegations aren’t true. And even that may not be enough if the school wants to start over with a coach who doesn't have this kind of baggage.
Skadden Insider, an unofficial blog written by two anonymous employees of the big law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, had managed to exist for quite a while without drawing much attention in or out of the firm.
The contest, a weeklong poll run, featured pictures of the eight contestants which accompanied the nominations, presumably by other employees of the firm.
In several instances, the photos were headshots taken from their Skadden employee I.D. cards, but they also came from Facebook and MySpace.com entries.
The top vote-getter, announced Monday, was Mattie J. Johnstone, a 2005 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and litigation associate in New York. She drew 400 of the 1,381 votes cast. A blond, she is pictured in what appears to be a maroon plaid bustier.
"Should we send her a fancy certificate?" the bloggers mused of their inaugural Hottest winner.
Then they added, ominously: "Now onto the men."
After choosing a Hottest Male Associate, the Skadden Insider had plans to move on to Hottest Female and Male Partner.
"We should be done with those just in time for the hottest summer associate poll in May," the bloggers purred in a Jan. 7 post announcing the "Not Just Hot. Skadden Hot" contest.
And they were considering adding a Hottest Female and Male Legal assistant to the series, based on comments to the blog.
Well, guess again.
On Feb. 7, Henry "Hank" Baer, who used to head Skadden's labor and employment practice and is now of counsel at the firm, sent an email to all U.S. lawyers, in which he noted that blogs "are to be expected" in today's culture.
"Nevertheless," he added, "we believe that 'contests' on one of these blogs is inappropriate and does not reflect our values and standards of behavior. Numerous attorneys at the firm have expressed their concern, and in some cases, embarrassment at such contests. We urge the authors to consider both the privacy and the feelings of the affected attorneys and to discontinue the contests."
In a post called "Not So Hot," the Skadden bloggers complained: "Damn, we feel like we were called into the Vice Principal's office today and had our knuckles wrapped."
The Skadden Insider has suspended nominations for Hottest Male Associate while the blog authors "take our tongue lashing under consideration."
As far as we know, the Skadden Insider is the only legal blog run by employees a law firm it attempts to gossip upon. Just more than a year old, it is a sleepy creature by blogging standard — going weeks without a single post.
Before it launched the Hottest series on Jan. 5, recent items opined on whether Skadden would open an office in San Paulo, Brazil (Jan. 5) and a riff (Nov. 26, 2007) on a Skadden honcho who decried there would be no alcohol served, should Skadden employees decide to watch the New Year's Eve ball descend from the firm's office in Times Square.
Skadden management seems not to have paid attention or cared — at least until now. Baer was not aware of the blog until the contest came to his attention.
His main concern, he says, was protecting the privacy of the women pictured, some of whom had received unsolicited phone calls from strangers, asking if they could meet.
But he admits to other concerns. "We are a professional organization and we'd like to treat each other with respect," Baer says.
And, shall we say, some comments during the polling process were less than professional.
Herewith: "We need full body shots to vote on who's the hottest...enough with these face only pictures."
Or: "How about 2 pictures per candidate?"
Or this: "Would've also liked to see the sexy french girl who does M&A in NY (forgot her name.)"
Nice!
Baer, for his part, isn't gunning for the Skadden Insider. The firm has no plans to try to shut the site down.
"I have no reason to believe that they did this for anything other than fun," Baer says. Then again... Anytime you take a professional woman and try to judge her by her attractiveness, it reeks of sexism."
Apparently, some readers are relieved that the contest has been suspended.
"I was disappointed last year to see how rarely anything was posted to this blog," one commenter wrote. "Now I am disappointed to see where the blog has gone, as I think the "Skadden hottest' contests are a bit absurd.... Is there so little going on at Skadden that you can come up with nothing but the hottest contests?"
The contretemps over the erstwhile Skadden hotties pales when compared to other flare-ups by law firms that consider themselves burned by the blogosphere.
The most ridiculous, perhaps, is the fight waged by Nixon Peabody, which commissioned a song — that's right, a song — when it was selected by Fortune magazine as one of the 100 best companies to work for.
"Everyone's a winner at Nixon Peabody!" is the song's refrain, duly noted by David Lat, author of the AboveTheLaw blog — a must read for any associate wanting to take tabs on the bonuses being awarded by the big law firms.
When Lat posted a YouTube clip of the song on his blog, the firm went ballistic, asserting a copyright privilege and ordering him to take it down. The move landed the firm with egg on its face when the New York Times wrote about it.
(Later, this commentary on the whole affair turned up on YouTube:)
Lat, by the way, is conducting a poll among his readers, who are otherwise craven about bonuses, asking whether they approve of the "Hottest" contest conducted by Skadden Insider.
Lat, by far, is the bête noir of most firms, because he urges young associates at firms to send him juicy tidbits, mostly about salaries and bonuses. He offers advice on how to do so without catching the eye of a firm's email police.
The notion of Skadden Hotties is, well, a bit quaint to say the least. It reminds us of a former editor, himself a lawyer, who, when hearing of a magazine cover featuring "Women of the S.E.C." truly believed it referred to the women who worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now there's an idea!
Rep. Henry Waxman just got the blood pressure going of the Clemens side. Said Clemens’ side delayed delivering name of Clemens’ nanny to the committee, plus had her come to Clemens’ house this past Sunday to interview her before she spoke to the committee. Clemens said he told her to tell the truth. Clemens’ attorneys are extremely pissed off about this, claiming Waxman is raising innuendo charges that Clemens could be bullying a witness. Waxman said Clemens used poor judgment in handling the matter, which he said probably was not that central to the entire case.
Just wondering, who would win a wrestling match between Rusty Hardin and Henry Waxman?
Many of us weren’t sure who to believe before today’s U.S. congressional hearing on baseball’s Mitchell report – the snake-oil peddling trainer or the full-of-himself pitcher – and we were left, almost five hours later, feeling the same way.
One thing is certain, though: despite the fondling bits about him being a baseball titan, an icon (and the question about what uniform he will wear into the Hall of Fame), Roger Clemens took a beating in Washington.
He had to throw everybody under the bus to save his hide – his mother (who years ago told him to take B-12 supplements), his wife (he wasn’t aware she woke up one morning and suddenly decided, “Hey, I need a shot of HGH”), his agents and lawyers (for not passing along important bits of information) even the doctor who injected him with B-12 (must have been a bad batch since it reacted the way a shot of Winstrol would).
Must be tough going through life with all those turkeys around you.
The business about the nanny was especially hard on the stomach.
As chairman Henry Waxman outlined, the committee more than once requested the name and contact info for the nanny, who was eventually questioned about the Jose Canseco party Clemens allegedly attended and discussed drug usage. Before the committee got the contact data, Clemens, who hadn’t seen the nanny in years invited her to his home and to reminded her – out of the blue, of course – that he really wasn’t at that Canseco party.
Waxman told Clemens he chose an inappropriate course of action, which prompted a defiant outburst from Clemens crack legal team as it stood behind him, one ace with a comforting hand on Clemens’ shoulder. This was followed by Clemens saying he was “hurt” by such insinuation.
“I was just trying to help y’all,” he explained.
How noble.
The best words spoken all day came from Rep. Elijah Cummings, who said if two sides were telling opposite stories he would choose to believe an outside source, in this case pitcher Andy Pettitte, who admitted he’d taken HGH more than once, as the sneaky trainer had testified, and that Clemens told him he had used HGH.
Clemens said Pettitte had “misheard” what he was saying and was not a drug user.
Cummings’s comeback was knee-buckling.
"I've listened to you very carefully. And I take you at your word. And you're telling me that Andy Pettitte is an honest man, and his credibility is pretty much impeccable,” said Cummings. “You said you were misunderstood. But all I'm saying is it's hard to believe. It's hard to believe your story.
“I hate to say that,” Cummings added. “You're one of my heroes. But it's hard to believe you.”
It was almost five hours of blathering tied up in a single truth.
WASHINGTON (Ticker) -- Roger Clemens re-affirmed his friendship with former teammate Andy Pettitte during Wednesday's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing.
But that friendship could be tested in the coming weeks.
Clemens was pressed about sworn testimony provided by Pettitte, who said in an affidavit that the seven-time Cy Young Award winner admitted to using HGH in a conversation which occurred 10 years ago.
Rather than attacking Pettitte's testimony, Clemens danced around the issue, constantly saying that the New York Yankees lefthander "misremembered" the context of their conversation.
"Andy Pettitte is my friend," Clemens said. "He was my friend before this. He will be my friend after this. I think Andy has misheard - I think he misremembers our conversation."
If Congress elects to pursue perjury charges against Clemens, however, Pettitte's comments could be used as damaging evidence against the star pitcher.
Pettitte was initially scheduled to take part in Wednesday's hearing but was excused on Monday night, along with Chuck Knoblauch and convicted steroids pusher Kirk Radomski, a former clubhouse attendant with the New York Mets.
One of Clemens' lawyers, Lanny Breuer, questioned Pettitte's absence from the hearing.
"He's not here, and I'd like to know why he's not here," Breuer said. "But people make mistakes. People forget."
Wednesday's hearing involved only Clemens and his chief accuser, Brian McNamee, who claims that he injected the star pitcher with performance-enhancing drugs.
Pettitte, who spent the last nine seasons as a teammate of Clemens with the Yankees and Houston Astros, also was named in the Mitchell Report by McNamee, who said he injected the two-time All-Star with HGH on two occasions. Pettitte later admitted that he had used HGH twice while injured in 2002.
Pettitte also issued a statement hours prior to Wednesday's hearing, admitting that he also used HGH in 2004. The lefthander spoke to committee lawyers under oath last week, providing a sworn deposition that coincided with many of McNamee's claims.
Chairman Henry Waxman read part of Pettitte's deposition during his opening statement.
Quoting Pettitte, Waxman read, "In 2005, around the time of the congressional hearings into the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball, I had a conversation with Roger Clemens in Kissimmee, Florida.
"I asked him what he would say if asked by reporters if he ever used performance-enhancing drugs. When he asked what I meant, I reminded him that he had told me that he had used HGH."
Clemens, however, said during Wednesday's testimony that he does not recall such a conversation evert taking place.
"I don't believe I had a conversation in 2005 with him in Kissimmee, Florida because we would have been with the Houston Astros at the time," Clemens said. "I don't remember that conversation."
Rusty Hardin, Clemens' other attorney, also questioned Pettitte's comments.
"Andy remembers one thing," Hardin said. "Roger believes another thing."
