I never thought I'd say this, but Bobby Knight is not such a bad guy.
Yes, he can be a head case at times, and I wouldn't necessarily want to meet him in a dark alley anywhere, but the media criticizes every miniscule thing the coach does. Knight is now catching flak for lifting player Michael Prince's chin up after he made a bad play in Texas Tech's game Monday night.
In fact, ESPN ran long segments with the tagline ""Knight slaps player"" for the majority of Tuesday. Look at the video: If that's a slap, I can hit all the high notes on ""Don't Stop Believin"" and ""Take on Me."" And if Duke coach Mike Krzyzewksi does the same thing, he would be hailed for encouraging the kid, while Knight is deemed an evildoer extraordinaire by every single media outlet in the nation.
Everyone involved, including the player, the player's parents, the Texas Tech athletic director and an associate head coach has said it is a non-issue. Every source has yielded that as Knight was lifting Prince's head, he said something to the effect of ""Hold your head up and don't worry about your mistakes. Just play the game."" Yet the media continues to run away with the story.
Around 10 stories involving the incident currently reside on espn.com and every other sports site is covering it like mad. The benefit of the doubt left Knight long ago, but he's behaved himself ever since he joined Texas Tech. For once, sports writers could leave well enough alone and accept the fact that they are covering a non-story.
It's not like they're hurting for stories, as the National League Cy Young was announced Tuesday, professional/college hockey, football and basketball are all in full swing and the Red Sox spent an amazing $51.1 million just to have the opportunity to sign a Japanese baseball player. I'd rather see five straight days of previewing the Michigan-Ohio State game than see sportscasters on their soap box blasting a coach for barely touching his player.
Very few people give Knight credit for preparing his players for the real world, either. Knight actually graduates players at an extremely high rate, but that fact goes virtually unnoticed by the media. When he benched his leading scorer two weeks ago for lagging behind in his academic eligibility, people still cried foul, as they care more about winning than anything. Case in point, former Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. He coached the Bearcats for 16 years and maybe graduated five players. Yet he's acknowledged as an amazing coach, and somehow got a job at Kansas State after resigning from Cincinnati.
Bob Knight's temper-tantrum days are over; he left those tendencies in Indiana when he departed. Both player and coach have moved on, why can't everyone else? Just get Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit out to Columbus, Ohio and everything will be much better, I promise.
If you'd like to throw a chair at Zach for defending Bob Knight, just e-mail him at zlkukkonen@dailycardinal.com to discuss your anger issues.
