Eight Hundred Wins and One Chair
With his eight-hundredth win tonight, Texas Tech Coach Bob Knight has officially joined the ranks of the truly elite coaches of college basketball. He has won a Pan American gold medal, an Olympic Gold Medal, an NIT championship, and three NCAA championships. Before his career is over, he may very well pass Dean Smith's record for all-time wins. By any objective measurement, Coach Knight's career has been one marked by phenomenal achievement and basketball coaching brilliance.
Unfortunately, Coach Knight's career has also been marked by inexplicable comments, controversial behavior, allegations of mental and perhaps even physical abuse of his players, and a variety of other angry explosions. Every college basketball fan remembers the chair.
Saturday, February 23, 1985, with Indiana down 12-2 to Purdue early in a game, referee London Bradley called a loose ball foul against Coach Knight's Indiana Hoosiers. Coach Knight went ballistic and was given a technical foul. For a brief moment, Knight stood there as Purdue guard Steve Reid went to the foul line to shoot the free throws. Then, inexplicably, in a moment that would come to symbolize bad sportsmanship and over-the-edge coaching anger, Coach Knight turned, grabbed his chair and threw it onto the court. The film of that action would be replayed across the nation for weeks, and would be shown for years anytime announcers discussed poor sportsmanship. Thousands and thousands of fans who knew Coach Knight only by name now had that awful, angry image attached to Coach Knight in their minds.
Although there were numerous other incidents- his arrest by a Puerto Rican policeman during practice at the Pan American games, the accusation that he choked one of his players, the well documented verbal and mental abuse of his players, his comment about Big Ten commissioner Wayne Duke at an alumni dinner ("You know, if any of you someday are on the street and you see that Wayne Duke is about to get run over by a car, I would encourage you, I think, to try to save him. But not if it's in any way inconvenient for you to do so."), his comment about how a woman being raped should try to "enjoy it"- the chair throw came to symbolize what many people felt was the crux of the problem with Coach Knight. He seemed to have lost all perspective. He seemed to feel that winning was everything. If he won, his actions were acceptable because he was winning. If he lost, his actions were acceptable because he was upset about losing.
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