From the Sports Desk

with Carey Phillips: 09/21/00

The reaction to the firing of Bobby Knight as basketball coach at Indiana University (remember, it's not the University of Indiana) would be humorous if not for the seriousness of the situation.

The student whose incident with Knight led at least in part to the coach's firing was burned in effigy. The president who fired Knight had to leave town as did the president's wife, who says she still fears for her safety.

Players threatened to leave the program as Knight's son, an IU assistant, went on television urging player defections. He said with his father gone they had nothing left in Bloomington. Right Patrick. They have nothing left except a school they have been representing, professors who have been teaching them and friends who have been supportive of them.

The coach should be only one factor, and a relatively minor one at that, when a student-athlete chooses what school he wants to play for regardless of the sport.

I'll admit that may be a little naive, especially when you're talking about a coach with a powerful personality such as Knight.

It's hard to imagine the young man who had the run-in with Knight being able to be a normal student at Indiana. It's much more likely he'll have to get his education elsewhere.

As for President Myles Brand and his wife, it will be interesting to see if they are at Indiana a year from now.

Now for the main part of the story - should Knight have been fired?

The answer is it should have happened years ago. The recent incidents are nothing compared to what has happened in the past.

The incident that got Knight in trouble last spring involved his alleged choking of a player a few years earlier. While the tape of that confrontation clearly showed the coach putting his hands in the area of the young man's throat, it's not clear if choking was actually involved.

In fact, I'm not sure Knight should have been fired for anything related to his handling of players. They knew what they were getting into with him.

The firing should have come from the way he treated people in general. So many times he was nothing more than a classic bully even when he was the most visible representative of Indiana University. If he treated people like this in public, it makes you wonder what he did in private.

Could anyone else at IU have kept his job while acting as Knight did? I doubt it. In fact, not many coaches at any school could have remained employed while acting like Knight regardless of how many games they were winning.

As for Knight saying he had no understanding of how IU's new zero tolerance policy would apply to him, if you believe that I've got some oceanfront property in Indiana I'd like to sell you.

Strictly looking at coaching, Knight is one of the best. His record speaks for itself. He won while staying out of trouble with the NCAA and having a high graduation rate among his players. But then again, isn't that what coaches are supposed to do. It's not like that excuses his other behavior.

Knight says he plans to be back on the bench soon, and he probably will. Some school will want to win bad enough that the administration will take a chance.

Although Knight denies it, you can bet that he wants to eclipse the all-time victory mark held by former North Carolina Coach Dean Smith. He's 116 wins away so that's six seasons averaging just over 19 wins. Even with a mediocre team, seven years would make it almost a lock.

Speaking of Smith, Can you imagine him acting the way Knight did all these years. I don't think so. Maybe us North Carolinians are pretty good basketball fans after all.

I really don't care where Knight ends up or if he breaks Smith's record. After all, somebody's going to do it eventually. I just hope Knight doesn't land at Western Carolina someday. I'm not sure I could stand that.

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