In case you haven't heard, Bobby Knight... wait for it... touched a player on the chin to push his head up so he was looking at Knight. Of course, this was enough to elicit top stories online at ESPN and (according to what I've heard, I don't watch the show anymore) the lead story on Sportscenter.
Look, I don't really like Bobby Knight at all for various reasons. But this is just getting ridiculous. Was it maybe a little excessive? Sure. Was it as bad as stuff he's done in the past? No. Was it newsworthy? Not in the least.
It apparently wasn't enough that the player, the player's parents, and the AD didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, it's not like they matter in this, do they?
Let me just ask one question... if Coach K did the same thing, would this be a story? If Roy Williams did the same thing, would it be a story? Would anyone even know about it outside the player and coach? Nope.
But if the media can't talk about this, what can they complain about?
For good measure, here's a Sportscenter clip with Bob Knight's top 10 soundbites... some are rather funny (Knight can definitely be funny), some highlight a lot of the things I don't like about him. Before the clip I'll end with a quote from Steve Rushin of SI a few years ago that at least I found funny:
Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight likes to say of sportswriters: "Most of us learn to write by the second grade, then move on to bigger things.'' Most of us stop throwing chairs and calling ourselves Bobby by the second grade, too.
7 comments:
this is, in the tv industry, what they call a slow news day.
"touched a player on the chin to push his head up"
Touched? Think of other situations in life outside of sports. What if somebody "touched" your chin that way? Would you totally freak out? I would.
Can you think of other situations other than sports where you wouldn't be upset if someone came right up in your face and started yelling at you for what you're doing wrong? The situation's different in sports... if this happened to me somewhere else, of course i'd be upset. If a coach did that to me, I wouldn't be.
I agree there's a fine line between excessiveness and motivation, this, IMO, didn't even come all that close to crossing it.
I just think some people are way too dismissive of this. Think of this another way: Bobby Knight is in a position of power over the player. The player is essentially defenseless--if he tries to do that to Knight, he's off the team and out of school and maybe in worse trouble than that. They're not in equal positions of power. And so when somebody in a higher position of power uses any form of violence toward somebody in a lower position of power, I'm disturbed.
Well it's true that Knight is in a position of power, but that's just how sports is as you know. All coaches are in a position of power like that. I'm just not sure that was such an egregious display of violence.
All I ask is this, if Coach K or Roy Williams or another coach with a good reputation was shown doing this, would anyone even think twice about it? Obviously, it's all speculation, but I highly doubt it.
I might be too dismissive of it, but I truly saw it as being a little excessive, but nothing that's completely out of the ordinary for a player/coach.
Actually, I think if somebody other than Knight did it, it might get more attention (keep in mind I don't get ESPN and have missed the evidently round-the-clock coverage). Knight's gotten away with so many worse acts against his own players that this seems like nothing; if a coach with a different repuation did that, people might say, "What in the world is that about?"
But I guess if I react stronger to violence than most, just look at my name ; )
Yea, Knight didn't do anything wrong.
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