A Knight of Familiar Disappointment

Editor's Note: This column originally published Feb. 4, 2008.

With Bob Knight, the latest black eye was never more than a downturned head, blown call or salad bar running low on iceberg lettuce away.

So when Knight abruptly announced his retirement Monday, a day which might replace Christmas on the calendars of more than a few referees, the logical reaction was to wait for the next shoe to drop. Or, since it's Knight we're talking about, wait for the shoe to come hurtling at an unsuspecting reporter.

Had he given another impromptu lesson on etiquette while gripping a Texas Tech student by the arm with the same gentleness Gary Sheffield applies to his bat, as he did at Indiana in September, 2000?

Had he smacked Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance with a pair of pristine white gloves and opted for pistols at dawn?


Had he again confused hunter and prey, misfired and hit Dick Cheney or had he channeled the ghost of Woody Hayes and left some poor player trying to figure out exactly what the license plate was on the red-sweatered truck that hit him?

But in the end, it seemed that Knight had spent time with his family and calmly reached the decision to step down.

That college basketball's original reality show, its Rorschach in a red sweater bowed out with nothing more than a message conveyed through a university spokesman was almost the most disappointing development of all.

But it has nothing on what Knight did to his own career. Or what his retirement should have meant.

We may not have Knight to kick around anymore, to paraphrase Richard Nixon's famous 1962 seethe, but his legacy isn't so lucky.

And unlike Isiah Thomas' ongoing employment, there's no mystery around this sports' riddle. Knight's legacy couldn't be clearer if it was a chair hurtling across the Assembly Hall hardwood.

Knight's legacy is that he ruined it.

In the era of steroids and "Spygate", Knight's retirement should have been a celebration of college athletics played the right way, the hard way. But we won't be talking about Knight's brilliant game tactics, his ethics or his superior graduation rate. We won't be talking about how he held a full professorship at Indiana (in health, physical education and recreation) or how he raised $5 million for the school library. Heck, Knight could have brought an end to the Iraq War, abolished the designated hitter rule in the off-season and we wouldn't be talking about it either.

Knight should have been the anti-Belichick, the anti-Bonds. He should have put one in the win column for the good guys, but Knight had to do it his way even if he was his biggest victim. And so his 902 wins takes their place alongside sports' faintly celebrated records, a number like 760-some home runs, seven Tour de France titles, three Super Bowls.

What we'll be talking about are the explosions and how a man couldn't get out of the way of his own ego.

And that is Bob Knight's fault. His gleaming resume will take a backseat only to his own smugness, a testament to a basketball mind at least as fine as Wooden, Smith, Krzyzewski, Iba or Rupp, all given up for the guilty pleasure of arrogance. The first line in Knight's legacy won't be his wins or his titles, but that Knight had to be right even at the expense of his school, his players and his reputation in the same way Woody Hayes' name conjures the most damaging punch in sports' history.

That was all Bob Knight's choice.

He ran his basketball teams like boot camps with jumpers. But the stern disciplinarian ironically never found much use for self-discipline.

When Knight wanted to tee off an NCAA Tournament volunteer who mistakenly informed the press Knight wouldn't be attending the press conference, he did. When he saw it necessary to teach Indiana freshman Kent Harvey about discipline after he referred to the coach simply as "Knight," he did. When assistant coach Ron Felling voiced criticism of the Indiana program, Knight didn't debate or offer Felling turn-by-turn directions out of town, he just shoved him out of his chair. And when he wanted to call it quits just two wins after passing the 900-win threshold with his team fighting for its NCAA Tournament life, he did just that.

Of course, Knight might have gotten along with the media, critics and those not on his Christmas card list like a bulldog and a porkchop (and if you're wondering, it's the bulldog that was tossing chairs and expletives), but his unforgivable sins were when he abused his players in the name of his desire to win, his desire to do it his way.

When he needed to get a message across in 1997, he choked Neil Reed. When he was angry, he kicked at his own son (though Knight insists he kicked the chair) and head-butted Sherron Wilkerson. When his team needed motivation, he pretended to whip star Calbert Cheaney (an African American) in a move so culturally tone-deaf Beethoven could have heard what a sour note it would strike.

College coaches have a responsibility to their players and the player's families to develop more than a crossover dribble. To the cynic, that might sound antiquated at best, but to Bob Knight, champion of the right way it should have been second nature. Instead, Knight's final loyalty was to himself.

So when he resigned on a non-descript Monday in February, speaking through a university official in backwater Texas and thrown in among the headlines about Bill Belichick's hoodie and Tom Petty's lip-synching, college basketball's biggest winner left the sport in a way that felt like General Patton offering his final address to the kitchen police.

At first, it seemed surprising, a retirement that could have been so much more. Then surprise gave way to disappointment.

With Bob Knight, nothing could have felt more familiar than that.