Rainy Knight In Georgia?

While we are all still recovering from our Super Bowl hangovers, which is why the Super Bowl should be moved to Saturdays, it’s being reported this week that Bobby Knight is interested in the men’s basketball coaching vacancy at Georgia.

And it would be good for the game to have the winningest men’s college basketball coach in history with 902 victories back on the sidelines, especially for a major SEC school like Georgia.

I must confess that while he’s intense and his temper can frightening at times, I’m a Knight fan. Once while coaching at Army, during halftime of a game, he slugged my buddy’s father (Dick Murray,) who was playing for him at the time.

But in spite of these kinds of transgressions, to me Knight has always stood for what was good in college basketball. Things like teamwork, discipline, graduating players, vulgarity, white hair, plaid jackets, and of course, winning.

It was last year, almost to the day, that Knight announced he was stepping down at Texas Tech, and it saddened me. Maybe it’s because I enjoyed watching Knight’s team run the “flex” offense flawlessly. Maybe it’s because most of his players are loyal to a fault to the man. 

Or, maybe it’s because I played a highly effective bench-warming role for a high school hoops coach named “Mad Dog” Murray Ross, who was the toughest, nastiest SOB I’d ever met. And when I look back at high school now, despite how scared of coach Ross I was at the time, I respect him more than anyone who taught me during those seven-and-a-half high school years.

Sure, Ross threw chairs around the locker room that sparked upon contact with the floor. He slapped his forehead with the force of a hammer hitting a nail, just to make a point (what point, I’m not sure.) He would say things like, “The freshmen are so passive, they get out of the shower to take a piss.”

He told black players who grew up in the suburbs they weren’t black because they weren’t hip-hop enough. He made us run wind sprints before a game in front of the crowd because he caught us screwing around in the locker room.

And sure he said the phrase, “You’ve got to dance with the girl you came with,” at least eight different ways (”You gotta dance on the come your girl with!”) But Murray was one-of-a-kind, and a tremendous basketball mentor and teacher.

Maybe my memories of Murray are why I respect and will miss Coach Knight so much.

The reality is that Bobby Knight threw chairs, choked players, slapped his son, cracked my buddy’s dad in the face, and was vulgar and arrogant.

But did he earn the right to be arrogant? Was he one of the smartest basketball tacticians of the past 50 years? Did he understand the college game as well as anyone? Does he have a great sense of humor?  And did I mention he can be vulgar?

Yes.

The funny thing is, most people I know who do not like Knight and think he should not be allowed to coach again never played competitive athletics. Clearly, it would be unfair to paint a broad brush and say that’s why they could not understand the beauty of Coach Knight. But I’m guessing it plays a role.

Regardless, I’d love to see Knight back on the sideline at a school like Georgia to continue his legacy as a great teacher and winner.

Ridicularity Round-Up

Pleased to see Michael Phelps hitting the pipe. Very nice. Now we’ll see him crawl back into the good graces of the American public. Oprah, here comes Mike!

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