The General remains in his Indiana University bunker, reassured by those who blindly worship him, blaming it all on the idiot media, refusing to surrender as the world closes in on all sides.
Bob Knight is losing his war on tattoos and “Who’s your daddy?” and MTV starball because he is losing more and more control of himself, losing credibility with his players and–this will be his Waterloo–losing games in March.
The biggest surprise of an NCAA tournament with relatively few first-round upsets was not that No. 6 seed Indiana lost to No. 11 seed Pepperdine. It was that Indiana lost by 20. The same players who lined up like good (or scared) soldiers to defend Knight after the most recent attack on his abusive style spoke their hearts with their performance.
Their 20-point loss said, “We’ve had enough.”
Since 1997 Bob Knight is 4-10 in March. He has lost four first-round NCAA games in six years. Last year Indiana’s season ended with a 25-point second-round loss to St. John’s.
The coach who once owned the final month of the college basketball season is now a victim of his own raging brand of March Madness. As he psychologically wears out his teams, will he finally wear out his welcome in Bloomington? Probably–and regrettably–not with the people who count.
Knight’s coaching brilliance will allow him to win enough regular-season games to march on toward Dean Smith’s career wins record. He won’t come close to winning his fourth national title. But he, his legacy and his on-the-edge news conferences remain the hottest draw in college hoops.
If Knight were fired today, old-guard athletic directors would line up to bid for him. If, say, Kevin O’Neill decided to leave Northwestern, you don’t think Athletic Director Rick Taylor would love to have Knight filling Welsh-Ryan? With Knight’s commitment to academics and recruiting ethics, he’d be a perfect fit in Evanston. He would, at least, in the best of all worlds.
But the world is changing rapidly–Gen X is already Y–while Knight becomes more wildly stubborn than ever. He doesn’t mellow, he festers. Each 20-point loss to a Pepperdine pushes him closer to the edge.
One day he probably will go over it, as a man he idolized did. Woody Hayes, who coached football at Knight’s alma mater, Ohio State, basically ended a glorious career when he punched an opposing player. Can Knight be far behind?
His response to last week’s CNN-Sports Illustrated report was a 20-minute soliloquy that ranged from defiance to denial. He was angry, then hurt, then befuddled. He occasionally made you cringe because you thought you were watching a man coming completely apart.
Knight, a student of history, surely has read about the dangers of absolute power. Knight has been allowed to run an entire university as a dictatorship because he continually has provided what any fan wants most–bragging rights. In return, many of those fans have blinded themselves to his do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do hypocrisies.
Yes, he can be charming, loyal and generous. Yes, he is the idol and ideal of spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child coaches and parents who believe the world is going to the dogs.
But what they fail to understand is that Knight is as much problem as solution. Children rebel because too many parents are as hypocritical as Knight. Do moms and dads want their kids to grow up to be just like Bobby–a profane bully prone to going after mouthy fans and security guards? A brooding Brando-like genius who can be as mean-spirited as he can be chauvinistic? An egomaniac who wants the bulk of credit for winning?
Imagine a world full of Bobby Knights.
Yet he is allowed to run amok by the most fervent cult following in all of sports. He gets away with hands-on coaching–for which coaches without national championships would be fired–because he’s college basketball’s biggest star. He’s a combination Ditka-Rodman: People can’t take their eyes off him. He’s the closest thing America has left to Patton: He’ll say what millions would like to.
So when ex-player Neil Reed again speaks out, detailing how Knight choked him during practice, many Knight-ites respond, “He deserved it!” Of course, these are the same kind of people who gave John Rocker a standing ovation when he entered his first spring game. Tell these people they should be ashamed of their coach and they name-drop those who pledge allegiance to Knight.
Knight’s coaching disciples and the vast majority of his ex-players defend him in part because they’re afraid of Knight’s temper and his Don Corleone-type influence. He can make or break their rise in coaching or private business.
So Knight really has no one to tell him when to back off. By God, he will prove he can do it the old-fashioned way, his way, the way the groveling Pat Kennedys can’t.
Either Knight refuses to recruit the best NBA-bound talent–it might upstage him–or the best refuse to play for him. Yes, he continues to prove he’s superior as a teacher and tactician even to Dean Smith and John Wooden, who consistently had more dominant players than Knight has had. But Knight’s overachievers now pay the late-season price. He figuratively grabs his teams by the throat and finally chokes the life out of them. He can get only so much blood out of his unathletic turnips.
Wooden and Smith were disciplinarians, too, but they didn’t need f-words and head-butts to make their points. Their ex-players love them because they learned so much about life and basketball, not because they survived them.
Knight’s one gifted player, A.J. Guyton, didn’t make a shot (0 for 2) against Pepperdine, but perhaps he did make a statement. The Indianapolis Star said he “didn’t seem to look for his shot.”
Guyton, a senior, appeared to quit on Knight. But as the bombs drop all around him, the General rages on.
