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DETROIT FREE PRESS
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Sunday, May 14, 2000
METRO FINAL
1H
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 2000, Detroit Free Press
KNIGHT'S PROBLEM? IT'S HIS SUPPORTERS
To his friends and supporters, I am just another dumb critic of Bobby Knight.
To his friends and supporters, I am just another sheep who says a coach who
chokes a player shouldn't be a coach.
To his friends and supporters, I am another rube taken in by a videotape that
shows Bobby Knight grabbing former player Neil Reed by the throat. I obviously
can't understand the circumstances that would make Knight's actions perfectly
acceptable because I am not -- as his friends and supporters will tell you --
a successful college basketball coach like Bobby.
To his friends and supporters, I belong with those other fools who are upset
at the latest report that Knight attacked a former assistant last November. Or
that he attacked an SID 10 years ago. Or that 12 years ago, he verbally abused
an Indiana University secretary and threw a vase at a wall when he couldn't
get his way.
"Yeah, so?" his friends and supporters say. "What's the big deal? Do you know
how many games he's won?"
To his friends and supporters, I am living in the past. Why should I be
concerned about incidents that happened last year, the year before or 10 years
ago? Why can't I sweep these things under the carpet, the way they were in the
first place?
To his friends and supporters, I am exactly what Knight meant when he lashed
out at the media: "Most of us learn how to write in second grade. Then we move
on to something else."
To his friends and supporters, a game with a ball and a basket is clearly
higher ground than journalism, and I am an idiot not to see that.
Just like Bobby says.
The insensitive remarks
To his friends and supporters, I belong with those Milquetoast academics who
moan, "There is one set of rules for everyone else at Indiana, and another set
for Bobby Knight." And I probably think that if a professor would get fired
for it, then a basketball coach should be fired for it, too. How stupid!
To his friends and supporters, I simply do not understand what Bobby meant
when he once said, "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."
Just as I do not understand why Bobby was justified in once firing a starter's
pistol at a reporter.
To his friends and supporters, I am just another lemming who chides a coach
who threw a fan in a Dumpster.
And I am obviously helpless if I think hitting a Puerto Rican policeman during
the Pan Am Games -- and being sentenced to 6 months in jail by the Puerto
Rican authorities -- is somehow, you know, a negative thing. Whose side am I
on, anyhow? America's, or those communists' down there?
To his friends and supporters, I am failing to see the important things. That
Bobby Knight wins basketball games. That he has been a national coach of the
year. That he has won NCAA championships, even if the last one was 13 years
ago.
To his friends and supporters, I am overlooking the fact that Knight gets most
of his players to graduate. And that he raises money for charities.
To his friends and supporters, these good things -- especially the winning
games part -- more than compensate for Bobby's bullying everyone around him,
attacking the occasional underling, cursing like a sailor or throwing objects
against a wall.
To his friends and supporters, I just don't understand the pressure of trying
to win basketball games. I am a bleeping, bleeping jerk.
Just like Bobby says.
The uncalled for actions
To his friends and supporters, I am way off base to criticize a father who
would kick his own son during a game. And who am I to say that putting a
tampon in a player's locker isn't a good way to motivate him?
To his friends and supporters, I must have it out for Bobby, be jealous of him
and want to see Indiana lose.
To his friends and supporters, I am way off base calling for Bobby Knight's
dismissal, as university trustees meet today to discuss his fate.
"Look," his friends and supporters say, "if he were so bad, then how come he
lasted all these years and rarely got suspended and most of the time didn't
even get a slap on the wrist? Huh?"
And his friends and supporters smile in satisfaction, having no clue that the
answer to their question -- and the root of the whole Knight problem -- is his
friends and supporters.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.