Recordpub.com - SENDEROFF SPEAKS OUT

After returning from two long days of testifying in Seattle in front of the NCAA's committee on infractions, Rob Senderoff looked physically drained as he sat in his M.A.C. Center office Monday morning.
Kent State head men's basketball head coach Geno Ford noticed the sagging expression on the face of his top assistant and stood in the office doorway dangling his keys.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Ford offered.
But the thought of even moving from his chair seemed overwhelming.
"You can't begin to understand how tired I really am after all of this," Senderoff answered.
The nine months since he was forced to resign as an assistant coach at Indiana University as the presumptive fall guy in the Hoosiers' telephone recruiting scandal have taken their toll on the usually energetic 34-year-old. In that time, Senderoff has absorbed serious hits to his once sparkling reputation and skyrocketing career.
Since being re-hired to his previous post as an assistant at Kent State last month, Senderoff has been working to rebuild his standing in his profession, and testifying in Seattle during two sessions totaling 12 hours at the Hotel Deca was another step in that battle.
"I was glad to have the opportunity, but it was still an incredibly difficult process," said Senderoff, who has been ordered by the NCAA not to discuss his testimony. "First of all, having my integrity in question, and then having to read about it every day in the newspaper and online, and having what I thought was misinformation reported about me, it was all very difficult.
"With that being said, I put myself in the situation that allowed all of this to happen, and I can't blame others for that. The way this has all been so public has just made it harder. But that's part of working at Indiana."
Senderoff is accused of patching phone calls with recruits through to former Hoosiers head coach Kelvin Sampson.
He also allegedly handed his cell phone, with Sampson on the line, to recruits during home visits. Those actions would have been perfectly legal under NCAA rules had Sampson not been already banned from telephone contact with recruits due to his previous rules violations while serving as head coach at Oklahoma.
Indiana forced Senderoff to resign last October. Sampson's own resignation followed in March. The two were reunited in Seattle, offering separate defenses along with Indiana officials Friday and Saturday during a closed-door hearing with the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
Most media outlets covering the telephone scandal have correctly reported Sampson and Senderoff face what the NCAA calls a "show-cause" penalty, while Indiana could be hit with several penalties, including a postseason ban. Most reporters, however, have been incorrect in describing what a "show-cause" penalty would mean to Senderoff.
The Associated Press and ESPN.com have both claimed Kent State would be forced to either appeal to the NCAA or fire Senderoff if a show-cause penalty is issued. That could not be further from the truth.
Because Senderoff is already employed, Kent State would not have to go before the NCAA to "show cause" as to why it should be allowed to hire the coach. KSU would only have to "show cause" to the NCAA if it believed any sanctions against Senderoff were excessive and wanted to appeal the ruling.
The NCAA does not have the power to force a school to fire a coach.
Sampson had already been hired by Indiana in May of 2006 when the NCAA handed down a "show-cause" penalty against him for his rules violations at Oklahoma, issuing the restrictions on his telephone contact with recruits. Indiana had the option of firing Sampson if it believed those restrictions were unmanageable. It could have also appealed the decision. Instead, the Hoosiers decided to simply adopt the penalties as their own and move on.
That is what Kent State will most likely do if the NCAA decides to penalize Senderoff beyond the self-imposed restrictions he accepted at the time of his hire. Currently, Senderoff makes half the recruiting calls usually permitted by a college assistant coach. He meets regularly with KSU's compliance director, turns in phone logs every week, and he has already paid his own way to attend an NCAA compliance seminar in Boston.
"I am solid in my support of Rob based on his first four years with us and how he conducted himself," said KSU athletic director Laing Kennedy, who traveled to Seattle to speak on Senderoff's behalf. "From that point of view, we are very confident as we move forward with Rob. We are also very committed to the process, and we will abide by whatever the committee on infractions decides.
"In Rob Senderoff, we feel we have one of the premier assistant coaches in the land. And to have the opportunity to have him rejoin our staff, knowing the steps we would have to go through, are we prepared to handle them? Yes we are."
The NCAA is expected to issue its ruling sometime within the next six to eight weeks.
"Right now we just have to sit and wait," said Ford. "We just want the finality of it all for Rob, so this can be over for him and he can move on. ... And whatever happens, we are totally prepared. No matter what the NCAA says we need to do with regards to Rob in recruiting, Rob is so talented in his ability to coach post players, in game-planning, in scouting, that he is going to be extremely valuable to us in so many ways."
Senderoff is convinced the last nine grueling months will make him an even better coach in his second go-round at Kent State.
"My reputation up until (Indiana) had been spotless," said Senderoff. "And my reputation from this point on will be spotless. But I have to work doubly hard to cleanse my reputation now.
"I built a reputation through 12 years of doing things the right way. That has been destroyed. It is gone. And now I'm starting at ground zero again, and I have to prove myself even beyond what I've done before because now there is a perception that I do things wrong."
Senderoff is eager for Golden Flashes fans to know he never violated NCAA rules in his previous stint at Kent State.
"And I'm not going to do anything wrong from this point forward," he said. "Going through this process has taught me how important it is to dot every " 'i' and cross every 't.' "
"I am going to have to live with all of this forever. Even if the ruling (by the NCAA) is in my favor, I still did some things wrong, and I'm going to have to live with that."