The American Spectator

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Knight and Day

2.8.08 @ 12:01AM

THE DARKEST OF KNIGHTS
Re: Michael Brendan Dougherty's Anger Management:

I live in Iowa and being a Hawkeye fan, I had little or no respect for Bob Knight when he coached in the Big 10. He "cheated" by intimidating officials for many years as they became scared to call games evenly in Bloomington, Indiana. If you dismiss this, so be it, but it was a tactic he employed very successfully. He threw a vase at a secretary along with many other immature outbursts along the trail he blazed for many years. To Indiana University's discredit, they tolerated him as long as he won many Big 10 championships and 3 national titles. Once he stopped winning the Big 10 title, he became expendible as the behavior they overlooked for so long became his downfall. He used terrible profanity and showed little respect for people in his own administration. The book "Season on the Brink" details his use of foul and abusive language directed at the president of the university and others in a practice session. Sorry, there are more civil ways to tell someone to leave practice. He was a bully that was a very successfull basketball coach and yes he graduated most of his players. His out of control behavior will be remembered more in regards to his legacy and rightly so.
-- Dwight Walker

Michael Brendan Dougherty seems to believe that thuglike behavior by coaches who win a lot and have high graduation rates can therefore be justified. It cannot and he is very much mistaken.

He also neglects to mention Bobby Knight's truly shameful behavior years ago at the Pan-Am games in Puerto Rico, an incident for which Knight was convicted, to the best of my memory, in absentia for assault or some such charge. Vince Lombardi never assaulted anyone under any such circumstances, nor did Bear Bryant, to cite two famed disciplinarians. Both could, to the end of their days, spend their leisure time relaxing on Puerto Rico's beaches if they so chose. Bobby Knight, in the specific moral framework of that Pan-Am games incident, is about as "brave" and praiseworthy as Roman Polanski has proved in his own nasty little life.
-- Richard Szathmary
Clifton, New Jersey

Bobby Knight may have been one of the greatest X-and-O coaches ever, he has the most wins by a men's coach at the D-1 A level, and he has an Olympic god medal...but he was still a horse's rear end! You can try to slice it any way you like it, but he was and his actions prove it.

Remember, this is a man who:
1. Refused to speak to Coach K for years after losing to Duke in the Final Four.
2. Gave a player a head butt on the sideline during a game.
3. Slapped a Texas Tech player upside the head for messing up in a game.
4. Kicked his own son in a fit of anger during a game at IU.
5. Wouldn't even send a former player Luke Recker a get well card after he was almost killed in a car accident after transferring from IU.
6. Choked player Neil Reed during a practice, lied about repeatedly, and tried to make Reed out to be the villain...until the videotape of the incident surfaced.
7. Defied the administration at IU and blew off a scheduled meeting with the school president to go hunting.

For all of his accomplishments as a coach, he would not be anyone that I would entrust my son to. How can you teach young men to behave like adults, when you act like a petulant child when you don't get your way? Men like John Wooden, Dean Smith, Lute Olson, and Lou Henson all managed to be successful without being such boorish jackasses as Bobby Knight.

I for one will not miss his temper tantrums, his belittling the press, and his acting as if the university administration worked for him...and not the other way around. And, for the record John Wooden also said that he didn't always agree with his methods...not just that Knight was one of the best teachers of the game. I think it means something when John Wooden makes that type of statement about Knight's methods and how he didn't quite agree with them.

Maybe, just maybe, it's not such a bad thing that there aren't any more Bobby Knights out there in college coaching.
-- Eric Edwards
Walnut Cove, North Carolina

Correction: Knight was born in Massillon, but grew up in Orrville, Ohio.
-- Bill Martz

WE CAN WORK IT OUT
Re: George Neumayr's The Elephant in the Big Tent:

Concerning the article by Neumayr. I am a Conservative. You can go on and on, but they are all Liberals except Fred. I think Romney would have stayed closer to Conservative princples as a President than any of the others because he would have appreciated the support of conservatives. I stopped giving to The Republican Party after the 06 Elections. I have now quit The Party. I will wait on a Third Party.
-- Joe Atkinson

I enjoyed the first two paragraphs of G.N.’s article, after that he lost me because he seeks to follow the same path as the liberals, albeit along a different path and by a constitutional method. The Constitution prohibits the establishment of an official religion. The Liberals have, through numerous unconstitutional court decisions, established Secularism as the official state religion. Neumayr, by constitutional amendment, wants to establish some other religion in place of Secularism. This is not progress. What we must do is appoint judges who will strictly construe the Constitution and overrule the aberrant rulings that have accumulated over the past seventy odd years.

Here is an analogy. Think of the government as an automobile. The Constitution is the system of roads the automobile may follow. Everything that is not "road" (the fields, mountains, streams etc.) is left for the people and state governments. The automobile (government) may not go "off road." Conservatives say the government car must be kept on the road at all times. Liberals say that since the car has the ability to go off road, it may do so whenever the government (which includes the judiciary) chooses. (A Constitutional amendment is tantamount to the construction of a new road, but the "road" to amendment is strictly defined and the definition does not include amendment by court ruling.)

The Constitution as first written was an"‘issue free" document, strictly limiting the government’s powers (it must stay on the road) but with unlimited power to exercise its limited powers, i.e. it may take any road it wishes. (The choice of road is left to the legislative and executive branches with the courts to make certain the legislative and executive branches stay on the road.)

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