Bob Knight: 'Gatorade Is a Performance-Enhancing Drug'

Bob Knight the basketball coach was never afraid to express opinions that might make people upset, whether talking to his players or his bosses or the referees, and Bob Knight the ESPN commentator hasn't lost that trait.

That's never been more apparent than it was when he talked about Alex Rodriguez on ESPN Radio.

Asked to give his own thoughts on A-Rod, Knight said this:

There are a couple of things that I've always thought about performance-enhancing drugs. You know, Gatorade is a performance-enhancing drug. Anything with electrolytes is performance-enhancing. Who decides what you can use and what you can't and on what basis is it decided? That's always amazed me. Why can you use this and you can't use that? Every time I turn on television there's an energy drink being advertised. Why isn't that performance-enhancing?

That's an interesting perspective, and one that won't be popular with Gatorade, an ESPN advertiser. But it's a perspective worth debating: When Gatorade brags on its web site that its scientifically formulated product "delivers performance-enhancing energy to active muscles," how, exactly, is that different than Victor Conte telling athletes that his scientifically formulated products will enhance the performances of their muscles?

I like Knight's outside-the-box thinking on this. I'm not sure that he's correct, but I am sure it's a perspective I haven't heard from the rest of the sports media world. Everywhere else, reporters and pundits are falling all over themselves to say Rodriguez is guilty of a heinous crime. Knight is one of the few giving any thought to how we've decided which performance-enhancers should be criminalized.