Count me among those who were saddened by the news that Bobby Knight had stepped down as head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Monday (2-4-08). It’s unusual, if not unheard of, for a top college basketball coach to resign in the middle of the season, but perhaps such was business as usual for Bobby Knight.
It is doubtful that any major college coach in America was as passionate, demonstrative, and committed to basketball and its players as Bobby Knight. Many pundits would disagree with me when I say that Knight was more interested in getting things right than winning games, but let me defend the Bobby Knight haters.
While no sane coach likes to lose a game, I think Knight was at least as interested in how his “kids” played as he was whether or not they won. If his players applied what they learned from him, played their hearts out, gave it their all and lost, I think Knight would have tolerated a loss better.
Knight was no stranger to winning. When you win 902 games in a 42-year coaching career, you have little competition. Dean Smith of North Carolina has 879 wins to his credit, Adolph Rupp of Kentucky has 876, and Jim Phelan (Jim who?) of Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland has 830. Smith is 76 and retired, Phelan is 78 and He’s retired, and Rupp died 20 years ago. The next most wins – 800 – belong to the new first active coach on the list, Eddie Sutton, the 71-year-old coach from San Francisco.
Knight had 102 wins in 6 seasons at Army, where he became a coach at 24. He had 662 wins and 3 national championships in 29 seasons at Indiana. He had 138 wins in 7 seasons at Texas Tech. He coached the US Olympic team to gold in 1984 in Los Angeles.
Thousands of basketball fans may now take the opportunity to torch Bobby Knight for his well-known outbursts over the years. There must be enough authorized Bobby Knight haters to fill the biggest spot in the Super Bowl. I am not one of them. Knight’s son Pat, an assistant on his staff at Texas Tech, replaced him. Pat Knight was named the designated coach of the Red Raiders in 2005.
Indiana University expelled Bobby Knight for “a pattern of unacceptable behavior,” but only after his Knight-coached players won 3 national titles for Indiana and the 1975-1976 club went 32-0, the last team Division 1 men’s team to finish undefeated. (something even the New England Patriots couldn’t pull off this year). Bobby Knight’s “antics” are well documented for those who want to revel in his flaws as a public relations agent.
Less documented is the fact that in 42 years of coaching he never got in trouble for breaking NCAA rules and regulations, and believe me when I say that the NCAA rule book rivals the Internal Revenue Service code in bullshit. annoying and fussy.
Less documented is the fact that Bobby Knight players always had a high graduation rate; Knight had them follow the mark. Show-offs and prima donnas had no place on Knight’s teams. Knight was all about playing the game well and working as a team. Less documented is the fact that Bobby Knight returned his salary a few years after he arrived at Texas Tech because he thought he hadn’t earned it.
Some pundits and fans have already said that Bobby Knight was a great coach and a bad role model, offering UCLA’s John Wooden as a great example of a great coach and a great role model. Do I think Wooden was a better role model than Knight? Yeah.
Wooden’s success at Pauley Pavilion has made him the gold standard among America’s most successful coaches in basketball and in any sport. Wooden’s teams won 10 national championships, 7 in a row from 1967 to 1973, and from 1971 to 1973 they won an unprecedented 88 straight games, a record many sports experts consider unbreakable.
John Wooden is the real deal, and he’s also a big deal. So let’s break down what he had to say when he learned of Bobby Knight’s surprise resignation on Monday:
“I guess you’ll never be surprised by some of the things that Bob does,” said Wooden. “I don’t think there has ever been a better master of the game of basketball than Bob. I don’t always approve of his methods, but his players for the most part are very loyal to him. I would say no player who ever played for him, I wouldn’t say that He didn’t come out a stronger person.”
Another of the nation’s most respected coaches, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who played for Bobby Knight at Army, had this to say about Knight’s departure:
“Outside of my immediate family, no person has had a greater impact on my life than Coach Knight. I have the utmost respect for him as a coach and mentor, but even more as a dear friend. For over 40 years, the lessons of life that I have learned from Coach are immeasurable. Simply put, I love him.”
Bobby Knight not only won more games than any other coach in history, but he also made his players better people and more capable of facing life’s challenges when they left college with their degree in hand. So why am I sad? Because Bobby Knight will be more vilified than honored for what he accomplished both on and off the field.
I say that whoever has won more than 900 games and has never violated the NCAA rules casts the first stone. The rest might consider the side of Bobby Knight who failed to get really positive coverage because his few failings were so dramatic and public.
Bobby Knight is the kind of guy that people either like or dislike. I like Bobby Knight and I respect him.
I think his main flaw in the eyes of some people is that he probably would have called a winger by name, whether he was a critical college president, nosy player parent, disrespectful student, or unhappy janitor. I would do the same; I just wouldn’t do it that publicly, and I haven’t won a single game as a coach.
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley