When Bobby Knight was at IU, I was a huge IU fan. The Hoosiers were always one of my favorite teams, right behind Notre Dame and alongside Duke and North Carolina.Even though, as we all know, Knight had his moments, he is a great coach and his players always graduated. One of his strengths was that he always was close to most of his players long after they graduated. He helped many of them after their basketball careers were over and it often went unreported.
After the cowardly lion president of IU, Myles Brand, caved into media pressure and put a zero tolerance policy in effect for Knight, you new his days were numbered, and it didn't take long for the cowardly lion to find a BS incident before they fired him.
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Okay—coaches get fired all the time for a variety of different reasons, but I think in Knight's case it was because the administration felt he became bigger than the school (see Lou Holtz) and they were jealous.
Enter Mike Davis, a nice guy but maybe not able to coach at the high level required in the Big 10 and on the national level. He did make an early impact but with Knight's players but Davis didn't win enough—goodbye Mike.
Now for the best part—IU in its infinite wisdom in a search for a new head coach passes up some great IU guys including Steve Alford, Joe Hillman and a few others. What's the problem?
Answer: They're all Bobby Knight's guys.
And what do they do next?
They hire a known cheater—Kelvin Sampson. A KNOWN CHEATER!!!
They knew his track record at Oklahoma but yet they welcomed him with open arms—why?
It didn't take long for the known cheater to get in trouble again. Was it worth it? I hope the administration can sleep at night (no I don't). When you sleep with dogs you wake up with fleas.
To all of the kids in Indiana who shoot hoops by the barn, you have a great basketball tradition in your state. Probably one of the best basketball states in the country, but your university has sunk to a new low. I feel sorry for you. I used to really like IU basketball but now—I lost my respect for them.
If for some strange reason IU would call Bobby Knight to see if he was available, Knight should tell them to go screw themselves.
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6 months ago
Yeah that's what was so puzzling about them hiring him in the first place. The track record was there, yet they hired him anyway.
Now look what has happened.
6 months ago
Sleeze in sleeze out. Long live Bobby Knight, the greatest basketball coach EVER!!!!
6 months ago
yeah, Steve Alford. he was AWESOME at Iowa. IU was gonna hire him, but they got beat out by the University of New Mexico for his top-tier services.
Knight is gone. get over it. it's been almost a decade, for god's sake. Myles Brand isn't at the school anymore (he's the executive director of the NCAA). and hell, the president who was in office for Sampson's hiring isn't even there anymore. and he's not coming back. so any MacArthur fantasies Knight and his sycophants are having about returning triumphantly to Bloomington are just that: fantasies. there's just as many people in Indiana who dislike him as there are fans - many of whom are crazy rednecks who never actually attended the school. and yeah, Knight was a great coach, but he was also couldn't keep his hands to himself. even after being warned. and he got fired for it.
so just stick to Notre Dame basketball, dude. IU basketball, as you are no doubt aware, has enough problems of its own right now.
6 months ago
yeah this is one of the sillier posts on the topic I've seen. Steve alford is not a good coach and kelvin sampson really is. I don't think you can expect a coach to throw a career away like he did. This is only on kelvin
6 months ago
Passing on Steve Alford was a no-brainer though.
He couldn't duplicate at Iowa, with a mandatory 16 games against BigTen caliber schools, what inflated his record at NAIA's Manchester, which was to drop all the good Indiana NAIA/ Division III schools from his schedule.
Knight = Bully
Sampson = Cheater
Alford = Fake
What Indiana really needed then and now was a dose of Randy Wittman, Keith Smart, or Mike Woodson. High-quality ex-Hoosiers that weren't really in the "Bob Knight" coaching circle. Maybe Dakich can provide that, as well.
6 months ago
Can you here me now? Good!. We are talking about phone calls people not "my mama got caught with her 2009 Cadilac Escalade or her 4 bedroom beachside condo in California so that I would go to USC. Just like the pathetic "cheaters" in other major league sports such baseball. My god a cheater hits a home run record . A superbowl dynasty gets caught in "SpyGate" but yet we still watch when they are in the playoffs or they hit a home run or their in the Rose Bowl every year. We've chose to accept these cheaters but yet were so quick to point the finger @ others for the same things that we've accepted. If thats not the pot calling the kettle black I dont know what is? Wake up peoplejust like HGH in MLB. "Everbody's doing it!" If your going to investigate one university then you might as well investigate them all. And for all the people that love Bobby Knight and what a great coach he was when he was as Indiana(i am one of those people) that supported him and praised and cheered for him as he was headbutting Sheron Wilkerson or choking Neal Reed we should fire Kelvin Sampson because he called someone when he wasn't supposed to? If were gonna point the finger at someone we should point it @ ourselves........
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