Letters to the Editor
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Knight Moves
If I recall correctly, the best player Bob Knight ever had was Larry Bird -- who transferred to Indiana State to get away from him. So long, Bobby, and thanks from everyone in Terre Haute.
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nothing more annoying than being lecture about class from the classless
Bob Knight is a jerk. Did you see when he mocked the fan support at Texas Tech when he broke one of those win records this season (weren't there several?)? It was reported as being funny, but it was awkward and not funny at all. Even at the height of his career he couldn't resist revealing some petty, small minded grievance to the only people wholeheartedly supporting him. And now with the record (which he often pretended not to care about) secured, he walks away to further cement his nepotism benefiting son's position.
Pathetic.
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It's too bad he's gone . . .
I was always hoping he'd stick around long enough to put his hands on the wrong player and get the ever-living shit kicked out of him.
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Exactly
As someone who grew up in Bloomington during the Knight era (I was 10 when he won his first championship in '76), I can tell you that King has this right. For all the many stories told and retold about Knight in the national media (the chair, Neil Reed, etc.), anyone who lived in Bloomington while Knight was here knows many more. Bullying? I once saw Knight berate a 12 year old at his basketball camp for asking what Knight thought was a stupid question. As only Knight can, he loudly and sarcastically ran the kid down in front of probably 50 or more other kids. I was among those in the crowd, and it was one of those moments in which you feel so bad for someone else that you actually feel pain yourself. Hypocrisy? He chided fans and players alike if they were vulgar or otherwise classless in their public speech, but Knight himself once recited a poem to the Assembly Hall crowd in which he asked to be buried upside down so his critics could "kiss his ass." It was a funny line, but it was said on senior night in front of 15,000 people, many of whom were young kids who stayed to watch the senior speeches. I stopped being a Bob Knight fan long before not being a Bob Knight fan was cool.
Every tyrant has his apologists, and Knight certainly has his. Its too bad, because abusive behavior should be scorned, not defended. There are those in the world who do all of the good things Knight does without the ugliness. To all the Knight cultists who extol his good works, I say put your energies toward supporting someone else and leave the "yes but..." arguments aside.
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should his players be the judges?
I've never been a fan of Bobby Knight's methods, but after 45+ seasons of coaching I think the players he coached deserve to have a louder voice in determining his legacy. One has to look long and far to find a former player Knight coached who have anything poor to say on the impact he's made on their lives. In fact, all reports I've read mention that he only accepted "good kids" into his program and that the overwhelming majority of former players are successful and attribute a good portion of thier success to the lessons learned under Knight. Is he an asshole? Yes. But it sure sounds like a kid's chances of success in life are increased under the tutelege of Knight. So knowing that 98% of players don't make the NBA, why wouldn't you want to have your kid play for Knight?
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Good Knight!
“Bobby” Knight. The “General”. He ranks up with the best in many categories, including:
Most cowardly. He shows his “courage” only against the defenseless.
Biggest quitter. He quit coaching his team in almost every one of his last 10 consecutive tournament losses. He quit from the team in Texas on his terms, as all quitters do.
Insulting person. No need to elaborate.
Anti social person. No need to elaborate.
Overrated coach. Look at his results over the last 15 years, despite having the ability to recruit any player he wanted. Of course most players had the sense to stay away.
Poor huntsman. How many people have been shot by him lately during his hunting trips? We can only wish that he and Dick Cheney would team up as a twosome and head into the woods together.
Flip flopper. One of his best was condemning and berating with dripping vitriol for years those who used lawyers to sue. Of course what did this bastion of rectitude do after being fired from Indiana? You guessed it, he hired a slew of lawyers and sued.
And so on… He is a person who never grew up. Unlike coach K, who started out in a similar career path as “Bobby”, “Bobby” remained an emotional and cognitive 12 year old. Coaching at Army may have been his downfall because Army cadets expected abuse from authority figures and Knight had free reign to dispense with his adolescent tirades. He could never separate that environment from the rest of the world.
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Knight and Lubbock, Texas deserved each other
Lubbock,Texas, home of Texas Tech University, is the anal sphincter of the Universe. Fitting that Basketball's Biggest Hemmorhoid should end his career there.
Bobby Knight is a great coach, like George W. Bush is a great Christian.
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Hostages to Fortune
The ex-players that praised Bobby knight probably suffered from Stockholm syndrome. They need counselling!
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Wow how sad for all of you
If you're the future, we're doomed.
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His players must have been either wimps or desperate to stay on campus
I played rugby at university in England and if on e of our team coaches had attempted to strike any of us. He would probably have been knocked cold. Mind you, we didn't have sports scholarship programs and we were all just regular students. These kids are effectively working for a living on campus and bullies like Knight are their boss. I don't see the difference between his behaviour and your line manager punching you. In each case the bully should go straight to jail.
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I wanted to add this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/04/nhistory104.xml
(Ok so it's England, AND it's not precisely about sports, nonetheless the soft warm fuzzy feely goodies ooze out of it like the retarded emmanations here @ Salon)
A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.
The canvass of 3,000 under-twenties uncovered an extraordinary paucity of basic historical knowledge that older generations take for granted.
Sir Winston Churchill
A fifth of teens surveyed thought Sir Winston Churchill to be fictional
Despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents dismissed the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart as fictional.
More than a quarter (27 per cent) thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure.
In contrast, a series of fictitious characters that have featured in British films and literature over the past few centuries were awarded real-life status.
King Arthur is the mythical figure most commonly mistaken for fact - almost two thirds of teens (65 per cent) believe that he existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot.
Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, their film versions and television series, that 58 per cent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street.
Fifty-one per cent of respondents believed that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor, while 47 per cent believed Eleanor Rigby was a real person rather than a creation of The Beatles.
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The study also shows a marked change in how people acquire their historical knowledge these days. More than three-quarters of those polled (77 per cent) admitted they did not read history books, and 61 per cent said that they changed channels rather than watch historical programmes on television.
Paul Moreton, the channel head of UKTV Gold, which commissioned the poll, said that while there was no excuse for demoting real historical figures such as Churchill, the elevation of mythical figures to real life showed the impact good films could have in shaping the public consciousness.
"Stories like Robin Hood are so inspiring that it's not surprising people like to believe these characters truly existed," he said.
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In the meantime, here in USofA, the spectre of the Mass Marketing and Oprahfication of Everything yields this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-02-03-most-famous-americans_N.htm
WHO ARE MOST FAMOUS IN AMERICAN HISTORY?
Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubman: 44%
4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%
5. Benjamin Franklin: 29%
6. Amelia Earhart: 25%
7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%
8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%
9. Thomas Edison: 18%
10. Albert Einstein: 16%
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So I guess you're all right. Identity, gender, psychosexual political identity trump everything.
Maybe we can live to see a day where the NCAA does away with scoring, coaching, practice, games altogether so we have more free time to sit around and talk about our feelings.