But he wins and Indiana wanted to win. So they hired Sampson, cheating warts and all.

And really who cares if Sampson and his staff love talking to high school basketball-playing boys on their cell phones? The kids get to go to college for a couple of years and Sampson wins some big games, collects his paychecks and allows the Illinois alumni base to go crazy nuts. Who loses? Who is the victim? If Sampson gives better phone than his fellow coaches, huzzah to him.

The NCAA recruiting regulations are infinitely more ridiculous than prohibitions on using PEDs, as PEDs can be dangerous. College coaches are just annoying.

And then there’s Bill.

Belichick has a history of bending and breaking the rules. I heard a great story about this year’s Super Bowl losing coach that goes back to his days as the head Cleveland Brown. According to one of the ESPN football experts, Belichick didn’t let his guys wear jerseys with numbers and employed the cover story that this was because he was afraid of people spying on his practices. However, a Brown confided in the ESPN reporter that Belichick really did this because he used players who were not on his official roster, so that he could protect his regular roster players from injury and wear and tear. That’s a great cheater, ladies and gentlemen.

But Belichick wins Super Bowls – until this year – so he’s indispensable. And maybe all coaches cheat anyway, so what’s the big deal?

These guys just didn’t wake up one morning and decide to cheat. And does anyone think that these guys are the only coaches who are engaged in this kind of stuff? Is college basketball “clean” except for Kelvin Sampson and a couple of other bad eggs, or is this behavior standard operating procedure?

Looking at how the NFL has handled the Belichick situation – or perhaps mishandled is more appropriate – I’ve kind of been getting the feeling that this kind of thing isn’t as isolated as we have been led to believe.

And then there’s the high-tech cheating that we’re becoming all the more familiar with everyday, the PED in baseball story is a great example of this, but certainly not the only one.

Sports have always manipulated technology in order to improve performance, and so we’re running into some gray areas here. How are the present day advances in equipment, medicine, therapy and other related fields any different from the quantum leap benefits athletes of the 1970s had over their 1940s counterparts? This isn’t to say that sport can’t or shouldn’t place restrictions on their athletes, but where is the line drawn?

When I was a kid I saw the big, oversized aluminum tennis racquets replace the old-school wooden beauties that are now museum pieces, experienced the aluminum bat revolution first hand and watched baseball gloves get bigger and better each year. And these are just a few of the most basic changes to the most rudimentary tools and accessories of sport.