January 2, 2007
Bobby Knight
Today, Bobby Knight has made history. He’s passed Dean Smith’s record for career Div I-A coaching wins in NCAA Basketball:
Bob Knight has been the game’s orneriest coach forever. Now he’s the winningest, too. Knight earned career victory No. 880 the hard way when his Texas Tech Red Raiders blew a 20-point lead but withstood a 3-point miss at the buzzer to beat New Mexico 70-68 on Monday in a game lacking the fanfare of his first attempt.
But to myself, and the rest of the people who endured his temper and his constant presence on opinion pages all through the state of Indiana, he’ll be remembered a different way:
Knight - whose temper got him relieved of his duties at Indiana in September 2000 after he grabbed a student on campus who had greeted him with “What’s up, Knight?” - is the last of the great bully coaches. And while some decry his methods as crude and outdated, many who have played for him wouldn’t have it any other way.
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The greatest cost, of course, was the loss of his job at Indiana. Knight, who was so popular in the Hoosier state that he could have been elected governor, was fired after 29 seasons. Though it was his run-in with a student that precipitated the firing, the university saw the incident as the final straw in what had been a series of embarrassing incidents that involved Knight’s losing his temper. The most egregious of those was when he was caught on tape trying to choke guard Neil Reed.
I was a student at Purdue back in September 2000, when the story at IU broke. A student who saw Knight on Campus asked him “What’s up, Knight?” as reported above. Knight lost control and accosted the kid, grabbed him roughly for “not respecting his elders”, and ended up losing his job over it. At the time, the student involved, rather than being seen as the victim in the situation, started receiving death threats from angry IU fans. At the time, I sent off a snarky letter to the editor to Purdue’s student newspaper, suggesting that if that student was having trouble at IU, we’d gladly welcome a transfer to Purdue. The letter was printed and was available on the Purdue Exponent’s web site up until recently, but unfortunately now even the Wayback Machine can’t find it.
This incident, of course, wasn’t the beginning. Knight’s temper is legendary, and he’s been caught on film several times comporting himself in a manner far from professional. In addition the the choking incident reported above, and the recent furor he caused for smacking a player in the chin, few can forget the sight of him throwing chairs around the court.
Knight may have entered the record books, but his personal record will never be clean.
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Coach Knight is my favorite coach, in any sport. He is on my list of “people I would like to have dinner with”. If my son were going to play D-I basketball, I would want him to play for Knight.
He has incredibly high standards for his players. He expects them to think, he expects them to be respectful, and he expects them to graduate. Much more than can be said for many other college coaches.
Temper? yes. But he has qualities that I admire and I think others could learn a lot from him. It is no coincidence that Knight is friends with Bill Parcells, another coach that I admire (mostly because he won’t return to the Cowboys if TO comes back).