Wow.

Not only does former President Bill Clinton’s visit to southern Indiana today have to deal with Indiana University announcing it’s hired Tom Crean as the new basketball coach of the Hoosiers, now he also competes with former Indiana 9th District Rep. Lee Hamilton endorsing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Hamilton announced his endorsement this morning, according to a new release from the Obama’08 campaign.

Hamilton, a vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission and a man with incredible foreign policy credentials, cited Obama’s “ability to unite the county and his visionary approach to foreign policy,” according to a campaign press release.

“Barack Obama has the best opportunity to create a new sense of national unity and to transcend divisions within this country, not by ignoring them or smoothing them over, but by working together with candor and civility to meet our challenges,” Hamilton said in the news release.

“Obama has brought hundreds of thousands of new voters into the political process, making the Democratic Party more representative of the people of this nation and giving it new energy,” he added. “I am impressed by his wide reach and appeal across the electorate. He is redesigning the contours of American politics, expanding Democrats’ electoral reach, and inspiring a whole new generation of voters. If elected, he will lead the country in a manner consistent with the values, hopes, and dreams of the American people, bridging many of the gaps that separate us.

“His foreign policy is pragmatic, visionary, and tough,” Hamilton said. “Barack Obama understands the urgent need for American leadership in confronting many of the challenges ahead, first and foremost defending the safety and security of the American people.”

Timing is everything in politics.

You can bet Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign can’t be too excited about today’s planned announcement that Indiana University has hired a new men’s basketball coach.

That will be the big news out of Assembly Hall today, not former President Bill Clinton’s visit there, set for 2 p.m. after earlier stops in Columbus, Seymour (doors open to the Seymour High School auxiliary gym at 10:45 a.m.) and Bedford.

A former president visiting the area is a big deal, but we’re talking about a new coach for the Hoosiers.

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It was good to hear Indiana University President Michael McRobbie say Friday that he understands that many people want the school to “move quickly in bringing this situation to resolution.”

Of greater important, McRobbie said he and IU “intend to do just that.”

 The situation, of course, is the latest round of allegations made by the NCAA against men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

What was more than a little disheatening, though, is that McRobbie has assigned the chore of investigating the allegations, including that Sampson lied to the NCAA and to IU concerning the school’s self-reported violations last October, to athletics director Rick Greenspan.

 Greenspan? He deserves to be canned along with Sampson for bringing us Sampson, although it’s been reported in The Star that Sampson really wasn’t Greenspan’s choice. Still, Greenspan is the AD who hired Sampson amid a pending violations investigation at Oklahoma.

No, someone else should be investigating, if not just for the sake of removing any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Sampson should be fired. So should Greenspan.

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I’ve been home the past three days nursing a case of the flu.

One thing I’ve learned is that daytime TV really stinks, although I did enjoy watching “The Longest Day” on Tuesday.

Today, however, I’ve been watching the congressional hearing on steroids and baseball.

I don’t know if Roger Clemens used steroids or whether he’s committed perjury. I’m not real sure that I care, except for the reporting that there’s evidence youngsters — even children in middle school — are using the substances, endangering and in some cases ending their lives.

While many sports fans and others are focused on what’s being said in Washington as I peck away at my keyboard, my mind keeps wandering to what the folks at Indiana University will be telling us sometime today about men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson.

The Associated Press reported this morning — I posted in online from home at TribTown.com — that the NCAA claims Sampson misled IU officials about the self-reported recuiting violations involving three-way phone calls.

I’m eager to lean more about what the NCAA has found and what IU officials have to say in response.

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We’ll be editorializing in Thursday’s issue of The Tribune that Indiana University men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson should be fired. Athletic director Rick Greenspan, too.

I can’t help but wonder whether IU officials decided to talk issue a statement about the NCAA list of allegations today knowing that ESPN, FOX Sports and nearly everyone else would be focused on the Clemens-McNamee hearing in Washington.

 You can bet the Q&A concerning steroid use in Major League Baseball will be the lead story on tonight’s nightly news reports of the major networks, let alone ESPN and other sports cable outlets.

You can also bet that IU officials knew that as well as you and I did.

Anyway, look for the editorial in Thursday’ edition of The Tribune and online at TribTown.com. It’s similar to an editorial we wrote last October when IU first announced it was self-reporting the recruiting violations to the NCAA. Last fall, however, the opinion included an if — if IU found the violations were poor recordkeeping or over-zealous assistants, then keep Sampson and Greenspan but send a strong message such violations wouldn’t be accepted.

This time, we contend the coach and athletic director need to go.

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Georgiann Coons of Jackson County also responded with a “thanks for the nice flashback” and a request for fair and balanced journalism. You guessed it, Coons is a Purdue University grad and she prefers to recall the Farm Bureau Insurance spot that introduced Boilermakers basketball games.

“I really loved those Farm Bureau commercials, but I think another ad was much better — the man who is up in the attic, finds his old tuba and begins to play the first few notes of the Purdue fight song when he hears the entire band playing with him. Now that was a great commercial,” Coons wrote.

Coons, a 1981 Purdue grad, pointed out, however, that she “covertly cheers for IU and Notre Dame when they’re not playing Purdue.”

She suggested that in fairness that I publish the words to that tune, “Hail Purdue.”

Here they are, courtesy of Coons:

To your call once more we rally,

Alma Mater, hear our praise

Where the
Wabash spreads its valley

Filled with joy our voices raise,

From the hills with swelling echoes

Come the cheers that tell the tale

Of victories and your heroes,

Hail Purdue, we sing, all hail!

Hail, hail to Old Purdue,

All hail to our Old Gold and Black,

Hail, hail to Old Purdue,

Our friendship may she never lack,

Every grateful, ever true

Thus we raise our song anew,

Of the days we’ve spent with you,

All hail, our own Purdue.

Monday’s column in The Tribune about the cleaning lady (her name’s apparently Martha) introducing Indiana University basketball games by singing “Indiana, Our Indiana” back in the 1970s drew some quick responses today.
George Graessle of Seymour called to say that John Ritter was not a short, gutsy guard for the Hoosiers. He was a tall, gutsy guard, standing at 6-feet-5 inches. I’ll trust George’s word over my recollection.
“That was my team,” Graessle said, referring to the time he spent as a student manager with the Hoosiers and coach Bob Knight.
And Ryan Hallett, who described himself as president of the College Democrats at the University of Indiapolis, e-mailed with a hotlink to a YouTube Web site that replays the clip. Log on to this address and you can see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdsCEFA1Ln0. Ryan is a senior from Seymour triple majoring in political science, international relations and Spanish.

My memory of the clip was pretty close. The cleaning lady starts out in the Assembly Hall hallway, but she also ends there. I had thought she ended up at midcourt. On the YouTube site someone else remembers her at midcourt with Knight. I vaguely remember such a special appearance of Martha at a ballgame where Knight thanked her.

I also wrote that she whistles and then sings, although George recalled her humming and then singing. Actually, she hums, whistles and sings.

Check out the video. It sent goose pimples popping up, it was so fun listening to it and watching it again. But maybe I’m little too easily entertained.

Go Hoosiers.

Cinergy MetroNet Inc. will offer the Big Ten Network through its Seymour cable television operation when the network launches Aug. 30.

That should be good news for fans of Indiana and Purdue universities faced with no programming planned for Channel 4 in the coming season. Channel 4 and the Farm Bureau Network have long delivered Hoosier and Boilermaker basketball games across the state’s airwaves.

But that’s ending with the debut this summer of the Big Ten Network, dedicated exclusively to Big Ten Conference television programming.

That’s too bad, especially for folks without access to cable and for those who choose not to pay for cable service.

Having grown up a Hoosiers fan on the south side of Indianapolis, I fondly recall watching IU basketball as a kid on Channel 4. Although Check-That-Chuck Marlowe could make you wince, I always enjoyed watching the Hoosiers and the homespun advertisements from Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance that accompanied their broadcasts of IU and Purdue games.

The first IU teams I recall as a kid had John Ritter on them, a small, gutsy guard I really liked. There was also Joby Wright and Steve Downing and all the rest of those early Bob Knight teams like Abernathy, Buckner, Laskowski and May.

And remember the IU cleaning lady who introduced the Hoosiers’ home game broadcasts? She’d whistle the fight song — “Indiana, Our Indiana” — while sweeping the floor of Assembly Hall. I doubt you’ll see something like that on the Big Ten Network.

Supposedly you can see that clip on YouTube, but so far I’ve not been able to find it. Anyone able to tell me how to get to it?

According to an IU Web site, lyrics to “Indiana, Our Indiana” were written by Russell P. Harker and the melody was taken from “The Viking March” by Karl L. King.

The Web site says the song was first performed by the IU Band in November 1912 at a football game against Northwestern. The song has since been played at every Indiana football and basketball game.

Here are the lyrics:

Indiana, our Indiana

Indiana, we’re all for you,

We will fight for

The Cream & Crimson,

For the glory of Old IU

Never daunted, we cannot falter

In the battle, we’re tried and true

Indiana, our Indiana

Indiana, we’re all for you!

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