Kelvin Sampson acknowledges return to Oklahoma will carry more weight: 'It's not a normal game'

It’s been a long time since Kelvin Sampson has coached a men’s basketball game in Norman, Oklahoma. And he knows his return will not be just another coach going back to where they were once employed.

Sampson will lead his Houston Cougars, the top ranked team in the country, into the Lloyd Noble Center on Saturday for an 8 p.m. EST tipoff against Oklahoma. And even more than a decade removed from the NCAA sanctions that Sampson ultimately brought upon the Sooners, he knows it’s likely to be hostile.

“It’s not a normal game,” Sampson said, according to the Houston Chronicle’s Joseph Duarte.

Sampson was the Oklahoma head coach from 1995 through 2006, at which point he took the head job at Indiana. Shortly into his tenure with the Hoosiers, though, an NCAA investigation revealed that Sampson had made hundreds of impermissible phone calls to recruits during his time as the head coach at both schools.

As a result, Oklahoma was put on probation for two years and hit with a number of other NCAA sanctions. Sampson was given a five-year show-cause, effectively banning him from college basketball for half a decade.

Since, Sampson has rebuilt some of his image, though the run-in with NCAA enforcement will always be central to his tenure. But since taking over the Cougars in 2014, he’s built the once-AAC program into a powerful enough national force to help Houston be an attractive candidate for Big 12 expansion.

And now in the Big 12 for the first season in men’s basketball, Sampson and the Cougars are continuing to thrive, ranked No. 1 and almost certainly poised to land one of the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, barring a wild collapse.

But it also means Sampson has to head back to Norman for the first time as an opposing coach. And he’s not trying to pretend it doesn’t have some extra meaning.

The Cougars have a big time backer for March

Jim ‘Mattress Mack’ McIngvale has placed a $1 million bet on the Cougars to win the 2024 NCAA Tournament, according to Caesars Sportsbook.

He bet on Houston at +750 on the money line. A Cougars national championship would pay him out $7.5 million.

In 2023, Mack also had upward of $3.5 million riding on Houston winning the NCAA men’s basketball championship. It seemed like a sure bet at the time, as the Cougars were a No. 1 seed entering March’s NCAA tournament, just as they’re projected this season. Eventually falling in the Sweet 16 to Miami, they finished 33-4 on the season and were the top-ranked team in the country for seven weeks — more than any other program in 2023.

McIngvale, a Houston-based furniture chain owner, is known for his over-the-top, absurdly high dollar bets. Just like anyone, some of the bets have hit, some missed — but the biggest one included a $75 million payout for the Houston Astros to win the 2022 World Series.

The 73-year-old native of Starkville, MS typically places bets on teams in Texas, including a $3 million bet on TCU to defeat Georgia in the 2023 College Football Playoff Championship game. He’ll hope his Cougars can make up for his loss.