Bobby knight dies
- Thread starter Drew0311
- Start date
Most people will remember him for the chair toss, I will remember him for calling Baylor’s defense “Chicken s#it” RIP coach Knight
Great coach for his time, but like many of his generation, he would struggle with the total access that people have today. His coaching really struggled when the 3-point rule went into effect. Playing great defense and making it a struggle to score every time down the floor just does not play as well when team as can get 3 points instead of two.
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No big loss. The guy was a total p.o.s. human.
My major professor was a PhD student at Indiana in the 80s and 90s. It was fairly well known that basketball players had better have passing grades or there would be hell to pay. One of his friends had a player in a course he was teaching and Knight called him up and threatened him because the guy was flunking the class. Guess what, the player passed the class.
A lot of people think of Knight as this old school hard ass that may have been hard on his players but still had a lot of integrity. Nope.
A lot of people think of Knight as this old school hard ass that may have been hard on his players but still had a lot of integrity. Nope.
I have a good Bobby Knight story…
We went to the St Louis Cardinals spring training around 2000. We got seats in the first row right by the Cardinals dugout. Before the game, McGwire denied me an autograph and I was pretty disappointed.
Back then, the head coach would sit on the field in a folding chair. Right before the game starts, who walks out to sit by Tony LaRussa but Bobby Knight. Turns out he’s a friend of LaRussa and a huge Cardinals fan. He’s basically sitting right in front of us with the only separation being the foul ball net.
This was the period after he got fired from IU but hadn’t taken the TTU job yet.
My stepdad is a huge iowa fan. He BSd with Bobby the whole game about big 10 basketball. Bobby was kind and charming. He even gave me his autograph after the game. I still have that ball.
I hold the man in no high regard, but that was a fun day.
We went to the St Louis Cardinals spring training around 2000. We got seats in the first row right by the Cardinals dugout. Before the game, McGwire denied me an autograph and I was pretty disappointed.
Back then, the head coach would sit on the field in a folding chair. Right before the game starts, who walks out to sit by Tony LaRussa but Bobby Knight. Turns out he’s a friend of LaRussa and a huge Cardinals fan. He’s basically sitting right in front of us with the only separation being the foul ball net.
This was the period after he got fired from IU but hadn’t taken the TTU job yet.
My stepdad is a huge iowa fan. He BSd with Bobby the whole game about big 10 basketball. Bobby was kind and charming. He even gave me his autograph after the game. I still have that ball.
I hold the man in no high regard, but that was a fun day.
I read Leach’s book recently after CW mentioned it a few times. He blamed Knight in large part for getting him run out of TTU for no good reason.
Johnny was definitely a colorful character, and I'm sure was capable of giving a player or subordinate a good dressing down when warranted. But has there ever been a whiff of Johnny abusing anyone like what came out with Knight?
Frankly it's not fair to Johnny to compare the two.
Do you think he is the only coach that has ever done that? Hey, at least the kid was attending class, at North Carolina, they don't bother to show up and still magically pass. Hey, the guy was an ass (publicly & privately), but the **** that went on behind the scenes to keep kids eligible to pass classes back in the day and surely still now, would make us all sick if we knew all the details. The common denominator to EVERYTHING in this world is $$$ and it'll never change, sigh.
Knight had a giant ego and the success of Leach’s program was taking attention away from Knight.
I think the main point is Knight gets painted as an overall upstanding person despite the stories of how he conducted himself with players and he was also dirty.
It's just another notch in the 'back when they were real student athletes' narrative board by people that refuse to see that it was pretty much never like that.
Of course not, but the hypocrisy with Knight is that he bragged about the importance of graduation rates.
I was a grad student at ISU and was TA for a course that had an athlete and knew other grad students that also had athletes in their courses. Morgan was the basketball coach at the time, and let's just say the men's basketball players didn't have the best reputation as students at that time, but I couldn't imagine a coach directly contacting a grad student like that. That's pretty brazen and shows a different level of involvement and intimidation on his part. I doubt that many head coaches would have done that even back then.
After Johnny came to Ames, Bobby scheduled a game in Hilton Indiana coming to town was a big deal back then. Our sign said good Knight Bobby, go Cyclones something like that.
He was a heck of a coach and a fun interview. I don't hate him near as much as some do.
He was a heck of a coach and a fun interview. I don't hate him near as much as some do.
Didn’t Bobby choke out the son of one of ISU’s assistant coaches one year? Pretty sure that was the beginning of the end for him at IU.
A good comp for Johnny might be Huggins?
Straight shooter, will throw back a cocktail, players loved them.
I took my parents to the game when Knight was coaching at TT, mom was a huge Knight fan, I have no clue why, but she just loved the guy. The only time they were ever in Hilton. As usual, great atmosphere, I believe TT won the game, but it still was a fun day.