Anybody covered Bob Knight?

I covered Knight and IU from Evansville, Ind., and the most frustrating run of that was when Calbert Cheaney (an Evansville native) was breaking the school scoring record, Knight refused to discuss it -- or to make Cheaney available. I can't tell you how many muttered expletives were spit out when we'd see, say, Matt Nover or Pat Knight trudge into the interview room.

Beyond that, however, when Knight went off on a stupid question, it was, quite often, a stupid question. And when he gave you a serious answer, it was ten times better than the answer most coaches would give you.

You just had to hope he was in the mood to show up for the presser. Knight forced me to learn to ration the notebook, to use some for the gamer, save some for the feature, etc.

Today, with the Internet and everything going on immediately, you couldn't do that.

 

I can't believe that so many people in our profession are using the same kind of arguments that so many Bobby Knight apologists do. Things such as, "Yeah, he can be a jerk, but his players graduate," or "Yeah, he's often a pain, but he doesn't cheat to get recruits." As if a coach has to choose between being a prick and graduating his players or between being a bully and recruiting by the rules.

So, yeah, Knight can be funny and incisive at press conferences - often moments after berating some poor NCAA moderator or ripping some 19-year-old college kid a new asshole. That really makes him quite a man, doesn't it?

In the end, he is setting records in Nowhereville coaching at Nothing Tech. He hasn't sniffed postseason success in well over a decade. He has been totally irrelevant in college basketball ever since he was banished by Indiana for being the ultimate boor. It's all pretty damn appropriate, if you ask me.

 

i find it humorous that folks attempt to qualify an all-out prick as anything but an all-out prick.

who really cares about the prick's quirks? he's still a prick.

 

Did you raise your hand?

 

Apologies, hell. You should do penance for that slur. Community service, too.

 

When an old (retired) sports editor from our paper, who'd covered IU and Knight for several years, died, we got a phone call unsolicited from Knight an hour or so later. He heard the news and wanted to make sure people knew how much he appreciated the old editor.

 

beg to differ

what makes knight such a fascinating guy is that he can show a warm side, he can be incredibly insightful and cooperative, he can be thoughtful -- but the next day, or even a minute later, he's a fucking prick again. how many coaches would have called "OnTheRiver's" office and expressed their feelings about the old editor's death? i don't know. but these extremes are what make knight so interesting.

my limited experiences with knight have been uniformly good. you ask good questions, he answers them. but you do see writers who are intimidated and won't ask stuff. a lot of them. at pressers with knight that i've been at, probably only a quarter of the guys there asked him stuff.

 

OntheRiver..your story reminds me of a similar instance I encountered.

I had a good buddy from high school who's grandfather was Knight's ROTC teacher at Ohio State. When his grandfather passed away I told Knight to see if he remembered him. Sure enough he did and he sent flowers and a two-page hand written note to my buddy's family. And this during the Big 12 Tournament. I thought that was pretty classy.

 

Heard it a few times. Best coaches' (non) call-in show ever.

 

Sounds very much like Parcells in his prime, except that Parcells is somewhat likable and tolerable on a daily basis for those of us not holding a microphone.