Hoosier basketball takes on different feel without Knight
Tim Casey
Assistant Sports Editor
I'm sitting in the front row of a crowded press room following Indiana's 86-78 victory on Tuesday night.
Reporters, cameramen, sports information personnel and assorted others prepare for the conference to commence.
Some-one's missing.
A certain overweight, balding, red sweater wearing, chair throwing, neck grabbing former IU head coach.
Instead, in walks a young, trim, African-American dressed in a white pressed shirt, designer tie, navy blue blazer and dark khaki pants.
Mike Davis: The anti-Knight.
The disciple of Hoosier Daddy (the nickname some Big Ten fans assigned to Bob Knight) offers typical cliché responses. How his guys are "working their butts off" and "playing hard' and that he "knew we could win this game." And when I question the Indiana head coach on a second half technical foul call, which was announced as "on the bench," he looks up and calmly replies.
"It wasn't me," Davis said. "It was (one of the assistant coaches). He got a little excited over there. We all had a little emotion and we wanted to win so bad."
No swearing? No screaming?
Where's the man who once remarked about the press, "All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us then go on to greater things?" And whose mood could change with every question asked, sentence uttered, syllable pronounced?
The General may not have been in the Joyce Center on Tuesday night. But he remains the topic of conversation in this basketball-mad state.
That may never change.
Whereas 98 percent of the population viewed Knight's dismissal as a no-brainer, many Indiana natives still see Knight as the Messiah.
He's a great coach, a winner, a disciplinarian, they say. Plus, his players graduate. No argument there. Notice the word choice. Argument. Just what we, this American society, loves. John Rocker, Allen Iverson, Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman and Bobby Knight. That quintet (and many more) gave us a healthy dose of material to quarrel about these past few years.
What a country, the United States. Forget the games. We want action, drama and suspense. Athletic theater.
Maybe in politics, we believe one person cannot make much of a difference. But in sports?
Bring on Tyson's biting, Rocker's bickering, Rodman's ranting and Iverson's rapping. Message: earn a certain celebrity status, do something outrageous, anything out of the ordinary, and you will gain even more attention.
This isn't to say that Robert Montgomery Knight yearned for publicity. If he coached at Indiana Community College, if the media did not chronicle his every move, Knight would still be the same person with the same positive characteristics and the same flaws.
Yet he was (and still is) a public figure, an Indiana icon. With that notoriety comes both adulation and criticism. And when you embarrass the University, your players and yourself, people will know about it and you will be judged, whether you like it or not.
Knight's the ultimate psychological case study.
My favorite Knight story, as described in Gene Wojciechowski's 1990 book entitled "Pond Scum and Vultures" was in 1980 when 60 Minutes ran a segment on Knight that included commentary from then-Sports Illustrated writer Curry Kirkpatrick. Sometime after the interview, Kirkpatrick went to IU's final game of the regular season, sat on press row, then went to the news conference. Although the 60 Minutes piece had not been aired, Knight had apparently heard about Kirkpatrick's `negative' comments. When Knight arrived in the room, he cursed out Kirkpatrick and addressed the reporters.
"I want you all to know that I'm not saying one more word until that a** hole leaves," Knight said, "and you all know who I mean."
Kirkpatrick told Knight that he was leaving "for the people's sake, not yours" and went back to type his story. As Kirkpatrick began to write, some Indiana fans threw stuff at his computer and one even used a pennant to slap Kirkpatrick. SI wrote a letter to IU's president but Kirkpatrick never mentioned what happened after the game in print.
At the Final Four that year, the now-gracious coach and confused writer embraced.
Then a few weeks later, Knight sent an autographed copy of a book, "All I Know About Coaching Basketball," to Kirkpatrick.
With every page blank.
There have been thousands of adjectives used to describe Knight.
But he's certainly not boring.
So while everyone watched a decent, sometimes monotonous, basketball game on Tuesday night, an abusive, brash ex-coach was hundreds of miles away.
And we missed him dearly.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Sports Stories for Thursday, December 7, 2000
