Last Days of Knight
- Thread starter bkmtnittany1
- Start date
Joe treated the media like crap for most of his career and it came back to bite him in the ass.
Very true. Some of the players who praised Paterno after his death had rather colorful and less than
flattering nicknames for him when they were playing.
I always wonder why no one mentions the topic of mental illness with Bobby Knight....
So you are acknowledging Paterno was smeared because he had previously mistreated the media and not because of the absurd accusation that he “covered up child rape”?
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I would not put Joe anywhere near the level that Knight was. But you are kidding yourself if you don't believe that Joe at times was very harsh with his players and sometimes down right mean. Like I posted, read the Posnanski book and pay particular attention to how he treated Don Abbey. Went out of his way to humiliate him. It was a different time and many coaches behaved the same way.
I think Knight got worse over time as he kept getting away with more. Joe improved with age in how he treated his players. He had not use for the media after they violated his confidence with the Jackie Sherrill/Barry Switzer comment which was meant to be private.
You have to read a book before you can write one.
In his prime, Bobby Knight was one of the great coaches of all time -- in any sport at any level.
I'd highly recommend John Feinstein's classic book A Season On The Brink for a good description of the life and times of the man, boiled down to one tumultuous year.
Inevitably, Knight burned out and became a caricature of himself. The physical and verbal abuse, the chairs thrown across the court, the meltdowns, and so forth. A sad spectacle.
In the end, he was testimony to the price paid for hanging on too long. Then again, he has a lot of company in that regard -- to include a legendary Penn State coach.
I'd highly recommend John Feinstein's classic book A Season On The Brink for a good description of the life and times of the man, boiled down to one tumultuous year.
Inevitably, Knight burned out and became a caricature of himself. The physical and verbal abuse, the chairs thrown across the court, the meltdowns, and so forth. A sad spectacle.
In the end, he was testimony to the price paid for hanging on too long. Then again, he has a lot of company in that regard -- to include a legendary Penn State coach.
What had struck me with all the clips of Knight being a jerk that resurfaced with the airing of the 30 for 30 (example -- how he yelled at the press conference moderator for messing something up) was that no one ever stood up to him. They let him shout them down without any sort of pushback. The moderator at the press conference easily could have told him to either talk or get off the stage. The writers that he'd demean in press conferences could have come right back at him rather than just taking his crap and writing it in their notebooks.
Wrestling fans know of a story concerning one small, tough person who stood up to him.
1960 Olympic gold medalist Douglas Blubaugh was head wrestling coach at IU from 1973 to 1984. Early in his tenure while he jogged in the practice facility during basketball practice, Knight yelled at him to leave, using more than one expletive. Blubaugh pinned Knight to a wall, and told him never to repeat his performance. He never did.
https://newsok.com/article/5559704/doug-blubaugh-was-tougher-than-he-was-good
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Hall of Fame Linebacker? I know Vic Surma Sr. called Paterno “The Rat”, but that was only because Joe apparently couldn’t prevent his son from becoming gay. Vic Sr. had greatly respected Joe prior to his son playing for him.
Not so coincidentally, it was Vic’s brother John who, as a BOT member, pushed hardest for Joe’s firing. I also strongly suspect John Surma took the lead as a far giving direction to Louis Freeh to reach a certain conclusion with his “investigation”.
Wrestling fans know of a story concerning one small, tough person who stood up to him.
1960 Olympic gold medalist Douglas Blubaugh was head wrestling coach at IU from 1973 to 1984. Early in his tenure while he jogged in the practice facility during basketball practice, Knight yelled at him to leave, using more than one expletive. Blubaugh pinned Knight to a wall, and told him never to repeat his performance. He never did.
https://newsok.com/article/5559704/doug-blubaugh-was-tougher-than-he-was-good
That’s great
That's an overblown stat. MOST schools will have a very high grad rate for players who stick around for four years. The question should be, what's the percentage of kids who enter a program and graduate from there?. If you are going to run off 90% of an incoming class, it doesn't take too many people graduating to make your four year numbers look good.
The people who should have stood up to him, and were responsible for doing so, were Knight's employers, not the reporters, not the moderators, not the low level, college event interns, etc. The problem was that Knight's employers didn't give a sh!# about his antics because he won enough to make it worth their while. Eventually he didn't win enough to do so.
ESPN reporter, and former local CDT scribe, Heather Dinich, put herself on the map when she scored the only in-depth interview with Knight during those final days of his at Indiana.
http://www.xgames.com/video/23105549/dinich-recalls-final-interview-knight
