Tuesday, May 16, 2000
Knight supporter can't duck the flower pot
And now Bob Knight will attempt the impossible, which is to be someone he is not. At age 59, Knight will try to stop being Knight. Good luck.
“He has given me his word he will take extraordinary steps to change his be
havior,” Indiana University president Myles Brand announced Monday. Knight should have done that decades ago, but, well, you know, he won lots of basketball games. So, really, behavior modification was not a huge priority in Bloomington.
The school punished him Monday, though. Whacked The General good. As of now, Knight's on double-secret probation. “Abusive, uncivil, em barrassing behavior will not be tolerated,” Brand decided. Especially if the Hoosiers don't beat Purdue.
Are we being cynical? Oh, yeah. After an internal investigation turned up what the rest of us knew 15 years ago — that Knight has a big ol' temper, dontcha know — Brand decided to suspend Knight for three games and fine him $30,000. And demand that he act like a human being, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Well.
We know enough about gutless administrators and all-powerful coaches to have predicted this. But three games? For a career of brow-beating and worse?
I was with Knight until the secretary thing. I was behind him, with reservations, until Jeanette Hartgraves claimed
Knight called her an unprintable name two years ago. I thought his ends justified his means, until Hartgraves said Knight launched a flower pot against the wall behind her desk.
Ms. Hartgraves is a rough, tough 66-year-old.
The coach lost me then.
And it kept going. He fought with a school sports publicist. He fought with the athletic director. He fought with his own son, for goodness sake. Thank God the investigation is over, lest we discover Knight and Mike Tyson are the same person.
This is a man out of control.
This is a man who needed more than a three-game vacation. He needed a month in the Bahamas. Or, better, a month being “coached” by Neil Reed, Jeanette Hartgraves and anyone else he test-drove his temper on.
“I have absolutely no problem with the guidelines,” Knight said in a statement. Well, that's big of him.
But can he live by them?
These are the central ironies of The General's life: The discipline he demands from his players he fails to exercise on himself. The respect for authority he admires applies to him only if he is the authority. Knight urges more institutional control over athletics while doing what he pleases.
And really. Knight ... change? Getting rocks to breathe would be easier. Knight is who he is. Most decidedly. That's part of his appeal. It's also why he finds himself where he is today, a trained seal on a short leash. The new, Prozac Bob Knight.
We'll see.
This was the easy way out for IU. It was the soft middle ground between nothing and everything. If Brand had any guts, he'd have fired Knight. Excuse me: Asked for his resignation. But this is not the school's fault, for humoring the coach for 29 years. It is not Neil Reed's fault, for getting this ball rolling. It's nobody's fault but Knight's.
Knight's whole catalog of abuses comes down to one simple reality:
You just don't treat people that way.
Player, son, secretary. Whoever. The world balances precariously on a code of conduct, an unwritten contract that requests we be civil to one another. What if everyone acted like Bob Knight?
I'm sorry. I truly am. Not because I think Knight is no longer a great basketball coach. He is. But really, so what? It's because I always thought he was a very good, if flawed, man. A part of me still believes that. There isn't a player who has made it four years with him that Knight wouldn't help.
But another part of me says, “What kind of guy cusses out a 64-year-old woman?” And why would he get physical with his son?
I couldn't care less how he treats the media. Over the years, we've probably gotten what we've deserved.
This isn't about that. It's about one human being having respect for other human beings. IU has given Knight a chance to figure that part out himself, with minimal punishment. Can he do it, 59 years into things? What a thing it would be if he can.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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