Basketball coach, born in Massillon, Ohio, USA. He played on the Ohio State 1960 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion team, then became assistant coach (1963) and head coach (196570) at West Point. He became coach at Indiana University (1971) and led his team to three NCAA championships (1976, 1981, 1987), and his Indiana teams never had a losing season. He coached the American team that won the Olympic gold medal in basketball (1984) and the US team that won the gold medal in the Pan American Games (1979). He emphasized discipline and defence on the court, and his passion for winning occasionally got him into trouble: as coach of the US team at the Pan-American Games (1979) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he was charged with aggravated assault against a police officer in the gymnasium; and at the 1981 NCAA final four, he put a bothersome Louisiana State University supporter in a trash can.
Knight is one of NCAA Division I college basketball's most controversial coaches in terms of his behavior.Playing career
Bob Knight began his career as a player at Orrville High School and continued under Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State University in 1958.
Coaching career
Army
After graduation in 1962, Bob Knight coached at Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) High School for one year, then accepted an assistant coaching position at Army in 1963, where, two years later, he was named the head coach at the relatively young age of 24. In six seasons at West Point, Knight won 102 games.
Indiana
Knight was noticed as a rising star, and when Indiana University was seeking a new coach in 1971, they turned to Knight. Knight immediately endeared himself to the basketball-mad state of Indiana with his disciplined approach to the game.
Additionally, Knight's Hoosiers won the 1979 NIT championship, and Knight won the Olympic gold medal as coach of the Michael Jordan-led 1984 team. Knight is only one of four coaches to win NCAA, NIT, and Olympic championships, joining the legendary coaches, Dean Smith of North Carolina, Adolph Rupp of Kentucky, and Pete Newell of California in that achievement.
Apart from the 1975 Men's Division I tournament loss, many fans and pundits consider Bob Knight's only other true failure as Hoosiers head coach was his inability to convince future National Basketball Association legend Larry Bird to stay at Indiana .
Knight's basketball philosophy
Bob Knight's teams feature an offense with players in constant motion, with an emphasis on having his post players set screens and his perimeter players passing the ball until a teammate becomes open for an uncontested jump shot or lay-up. However, Bob Knight has consistently had among the highest graduation rates among the college coaching fraternity.
Bob Knight was very mindful of the great coaches who had preceded him, such as John Wooden, Pete Newell, and Hank Iba of Oklahoma State.
Controversy
Bobby Knight is, indisputably, a volatile person.
Not only have his own players borne the brunt of Knight's behavior, but so have opposing players, reporters, referees, and Indiana University officials alike.
In 1974, during a regular-season win over Kentucky, Knight, after a conference and discussion with Wildcat coach Joe B.
In 1979, Bob Knight was arrested for assaulting a police officer during the Pan American Games in Puerto Rico. Knight was angry that a practice gymnasium was not opened to his team, which featured future NBA stars Kevin McHale of Minnesota and Ralph Sampson (who was then a high school player) at center, and his own Isiah Thomas.
Other notable incidents include Knight pulling guard Jim Wisman off the court by his jersey in 1976, throwing a chair across the court to protest a referee's call during a 1985 game against the rival Purdue Boilermakers , and allegedly kicking his own son, Pat Knight, during a 1993 game (Knight claims he actually kicked a chair).
In a now infamous incident, Coach Knight was shown berating a NCAA university volunteer at a 1998 news conference. When Coach Knight did show up, a heated exchange ensued.
Volunteer: Could we please uh, get back-
Knight: No, I -- I'll handle this the way I want to handle it now that I'm here!
Coach Knight's outburst, for which the school was later fined $30,000, would be replayed in highlight reels for many years to come.
Women's groups nationwide were outraged by Knight's comments during an April, 1988 interview with Connie Chung in which he said, "I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/big12/2006-11-14-knight-timeline_x.htm Knight's comment was in reference to an Indiana basketball game in which he felt the referees were making poor calls against the Hoosiers. Knight claimed he asked Chung not to use the comment in the story immediately after saying it. A crowd of about 300 protested Knight's comments on the Indiana University campus.
Indiana University was once again fined in 1999, this time for $10,000 for Knight's derogatory remarks about a referee. Knight paid the fine himself to avoid being suspended by the university for a tournament game.
An Indiana University secretary also accused Knight of throwing a potted plant at her, and assistant coach Ron Felling claimed Knight threw him off a chair and punched him in the chest after an eavesdropping Knight overheard him criticizing his program and methods on the telephone. Many feel it was Felling who precipitated Knight's 2000 firing by Indiana University president Myles Brand by leaking a video of a practice session to the media in which Knight appears to strike and hold the throat of player Neil Reed. He wasn't voted off on the first vote, but the team was made to vote again after the first results did not please Bob Knight.
But, arguably, the most controversial incident involved Knight feigning whipping a black player named Calbert Cheaney in 1992, an incident which made national headlines and resulted in protests by civil rights leaders. Although supporters of Knight point out that several white players had received similar treatment, this instance was the only widely reported incident. however Cheaney later revealed that the incident was staged for the benefit of the press after Knight's players tired of being repeatedly asked about how tough it was to play for Bob Knight.
In 1999, Knight was involved in a hunting accident in which long time friend Thomas Mikunda was shot by Knight in the back and shoulder with a 20 gauge shotgun while shooting grouse. Two years later Bobby Knight would be sued for the event where Mikunda claimed Knight coerced him into lying to investigators.
In March, 2006, a student's heckling at Baylor University resulted in Knight having to be restrained by a police officer.
Even more recently, on November 13, 2006, Coach Knight was shown allegedly hitting player Michael Prince under the chin to get him to look at him. Although Knight didn't comment on the incident afterwards and as of yet hasn't done so, Prince, his parents, and Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers insisted that Knight did nothing wrong and that he merely lifted Prince's chin and told him "Hold your head up and don't worry about mistakes. On the bench immediately after the incident, Prince was seen rubbing the spot where Knight allegedly slapped him and moving his jaw around.
The end of an era
"Zero Tolerance"
On March 14, 2000, just before Indiana was to begin play in the NCAA tournament, the CNN/SI network ran a negative piece on Knight featuring former players and critics. The most notable claim was that of former player Neil Reed, who claimed he was choked by Bob Knight in a 1997 practice.
On April 11th, 2000, CNN/SI aired a tape of an IU practice from 1997 which seemed to show Knight "choking" Neil Reed. Knight's supporters claim the tape is blurry, it is unclear whether Knight was choking Reed or placed his hands under the neck, and that the tape was repeatedly shown in slow motion and not full speed (where the incident only lasts a couple seconds). The Indiana University Board of Trustees started an investigation into Knight. As the investigation continued, media in Indiana leaked to the public various alleged negative incidents involving Knight, most of which were over five years old.
In May, 2000, Indiana University president Myles Brand announced that he had adopted a zero tolerance policy with regard to Bob Knight.
The fall of Knight
In September, 2000, a freshman student named Kent Harvey reportedly said, "Hey Knight, what's up?" Knight later told the media that Harvey was exaggerating the incident; Knight's version of the story was backed up by assistant coach Mike Davis.
Although IU President Myles Brand stated that even after a zero-tolerance policy was placed on Knight, the Harvey incident was only one of numerous complaints that occurred after its issuance that led to Knight being fired on September 10, 2000. Knight's supporters contend he was the victim of a media smear campaign orchestrated by enemies in the IU administration and that the majority of Brand's reasons for firing Knight were not credible.
On September 12, 2000, Knight scolded ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap for interrupting him and accused Brand and other Indiana administrators of distorting facts.
The next day, Knight said goodbye to a crowd of some 6,000 supporters.
Two years later, Knight sued Indiana University, claiming the university violated his employment contract.
A new start
After taking the next season off, all the while on the lookout for vacancies, Bob Knight accepted the head coaching job at Texas Tech University. At the press conference introducing Knight as coach, he quipped, "This is the most comfortable red sweater I've been in in five years." Knight quickly turned the dormant program (which hadn't been to the NCAA tournament since 1996) back into a winner, leading them to three NCAA tournaments thus far, including a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2005.
Since joining the Red Raiders, Knight has won his 800th game.
Books about Bob Knight
Several independent books were written about Knight during this period, and although they noted his temper, they were not entirely uncomplimentary. Three of the best-known are "A Season on the Brink" (ISBN 0-02-537230-0) by John Feinstein, "Bob Knight: His Own Man" by Joan Mellen (ISBN 0-380-70809-4), and "Playing for Knight: My Six Seasons with Bobby Knight" (ISBN 0-671-72441-X) by former player and current Iowa head basketball coach Steve Alford. Knight became not only the most famous sports coach in America but also one of the most recognizable celebrities in the country. Both supporters and detractors feasted on a wealth of inside information about Knight and the workings of a major college basketball program, as John Feinstein (recommended to Knight by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski) was granted full access to the program and Knight's personal life for an entire season.
The episode portrayed in the book most often cited as proof of Knight's basketball genius is when he takes assistant coaches to see a middle school basketball game and tells them that the star player of the team is a better player than any guard on the current IU college squad. When journalists, after reading the book, asked Knight if he really believed that, he famously replied, "I'm paid a lot of money by IU to know about such things."
In 2002, Knight and longtime friend and sports journalist Bob Hammel wrote his biography, "Knight: My Story" (ISBN 0-312-31117-6.)
In Bob Knight, His Own Man, Mellon characterized Feinstein's book as being banal (21).
In 2006, an "unauthorized" biography on Knight, written by Steve Delsohn and Mark Heisler, was released. (ISBN 0-7432-4348-X)
Film and television
Many aspects of the teaching style and basketball philosophy of Coach Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman) in the 1986 movie Hoosiers are derived from Bob Knight's real history.
Blue Chips is a 1994 feature film about Pete Bell, a volatile, but honest college basketball coach under pressure to win who decides to blatantly violate NCAA rules to field a competitive team after several sub-par seasons.
In 2002, veteran character actor Brian Dennehy portrayed Knight in A Season on the Brink, a TV film adapted from John Feinstein's book.
Knight made a cameo appearance as himself in the 2003 film Anger Management.
Knight School
It was announced in mid-2005 that Knight would be the central character of a new reality show for ESPN.
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Preceded by: Tates Locke |
Army Basketball Coaches 1965–1971 |
Succeeded by: Dan Dougherty |
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Preceded by: Jerry Oliver |
Indiana University Basketball Coaches 1972–2000 |
Succeeded by: Mike Davis |
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Preceded by: James Dickey |
Texas Tech University Basketball Coaches 2001– |
Succeeded by: Current |
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