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| The Bobby Knight face fans saw hinted at the strains he inflicted. |
Of course it’s the converse of that statement that is often used to describe Hoosiers’ love and grasp of the sport. And thinking of basketball in theological terms would make Bobby Knight something of an Old Testament god.
Knight, who
died Nov. 1, coached his Indiana University players and publicly conducted
himself in a volatile and unpredictable fashion.
“A player has
to fear him on sight for his coaching methods to work for them,” Jim
Morris, basketball coach and faculty member at the New Albany branch campus of IU which I attended, said in a class in 1977.
Knight’s
highly public misdeeds are well versed – they involve throwing things, grabbing
necks, trivializing the horror of rape.
Behind closed
locker room doors, he denigrated players, subjecting some to long torrents of obscenities, crude sexual slang, and sacrilegious profanities screamed into their faces. And for this, he was
popular with Central and Southern Indiana’s Middle Americans – those people who
go to church. And who are glad Indiana is an “at will” state, allowing them instantly
to fire a worker from their business who, say, throws a chair in the office.
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| My image of his quintessential fans, who loved faith, family and a screaming blasphemous madman. |
I grew up in Southern Indiana and for a while I thought the world of Knight’s on-court strategies of motion offense and pressure defense that brought IU an undefeated 1976 national title. I understood and accepted that the coach was regimented and demanding, but one year later, when a dismal 14-13 season concluded, my affinity with the coach ended as I saw that “demanding” was not the word for his ways.
Sophomore Rich
Valavicius, upon quitting the team, said in an interview that Knight heaped
abuse on the whole squad, yelling and yelling in the locker room after every
loss. The power forward from Hammond, Ind. transferred to Auburn University,
becoming the third IU player to leave during or just after the 1976-77 season.
Freshmen Mike Miday and Bill Cunningham quit early on, Midday saying he was
demeaned by the coach.
The contrast between my rejection of Knight’s tactics and the “que sera sera” attitude among other fans underscored a wider cultural split. I realized just how few people in my area understood a crucial distinction between discipline and abuse. And how few were willing to hold those they admire to basic accountability.
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Most of his players had nothing |
I heard non-witnesses to Knight’s treatment of Miday, Cunningham and Valavicius second guessing them for quitting, calling them “softies” instead of respecting the trio’s experiences with a coach they themselves had never met.
A great
university may be about developing critical thinking skills, but the adoration
of Bobby Knight among small town folks is a depressing reminder that the bulk
of the populace mistakes badass behavior for strength. And thinks that a
strongman figure is way to shake up an establishment that doesn’t care about
them.
“I would
hope that black eye never healed!” a woman who was a co-worker at a small
business in Southern Indiana in the early ‘80s zealously responded when I
interrupted her lauding of Knight to ask, “How would you feel if he gave you a
black eye?”
Much as I
liked her and her peers as individuals, when it comes to cultural identity issues, it’s usually futile to use reason with rural Hoosiers, the power base of D.C. Stephenson and Donald Trump as well as the fanbase of Knight.
Sports Illustrated columnist Pat Forde, a one time Indiana beat colleague at the Louisville Courier-Journal, wrote just after Knight’s death about this regional identification with the coach.
“He came to stand for an unwavering commitment to ideals that were perceived to be under siege in some parts of Middle America. He was viewed in some locales as a last vestige of something slipping away,” Forde wrote. “But here was the counterfeit part of idolizing Knight as an exemplar of discipline and toughness: he rarely demanded discipline of himself the way he did his players, and toughness is never exemplified by punching down.”
Others in our area who upon Knight's passing expressed measured criticism of his legacy included coaches.
"He refused to change," Nelson Jackson, a Louisville high school football coach who as a teen had hoped to play basketball for Knight, wrote in the C-J. "He forgot that it was never about him and that he was never supposed to be the story. His boys were."
Though
Knight’s endorsement of Trump in the 2016 election is what history will
recall as his political foray, few remember the coach’s first public backing of
a political candidate. Sit down first -- it’s a shocker that illustrates the unpredictability
of Knight.
Birch Bayh,
the most impactful liberal U.S. Senator of the 20th century, was
running hard for a fourth term in 1980 when Bobby Knight appeared in a TV ad warmly
praising Bayh for his integrity. Though he didn’t mention policy specifics, a typically
straight up Knight called for Hoosiers to re-elect the man who was the sponsor
of the Equal Rights Amendment, an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, and the creator of Title IX giving full equality to women’s education and sports.
Yes, Bobby
Knight did chart his own course and sometimes went counter intuitively. But his
sudden turns involved mood more often than politics.
I heard a former Louisville
bookstore worker read at an open mic event of his recollection of Knight
blowing his cool while preparing for a signing of his own book defending himself
in light of his 2000 firing by IU. The coach shouted, and shoved books off a
shelf, as related by this person’s reading (which he actually made in a lighthearted tone).
IU athletic staffers
told of Knight throwing a clock against the office wall, and of impulsively telling
an assistant coach he was fired after overhearing him on the phone saying that morale
had sunk during the later Knight years.
Of course
Knight was never corrupt, insisted on his players graduating, and gave money to
the college’s library, his backers constantly say. That belief in his players’ education was laudable, but being non-corrupt should be the norm, and giving to the library is not
a get-out-of-trouble card.
Moreover, l ought to be able to like someone’s motion offense without having to hear Middle Americans overjoyed at the idea of getting a black eye.
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