Bob Knight, Bob Costas Interview

we're adding a new member to the now team tonight although he is no stranger to NBC certainly no stranger to American television audiences Bob Costas is here with the story of a man who again this week is at the center of yet another controversy Bob well thanks very much as you know the NCAA basketball tournament begins tomorrow and Indiana University is as usual part of the tournament field even more than usual their coach Bob Knight has been in the news of late night is equal parts brilliance and abrasiveness he's regarded as one of the greatest coaches in the game's history but his team ended this season in a slump including one game they lost by 50 points and Knights infamous temper as again made headlines he came the head fun here's the latest incident night butting heads with a player he pulled from a game last week the coach told me it was a simple accident I went down and in and bent over and we apparently collided heads when I might even notice anything more about it at the time then two guys in close-quarters one of them bending over one of them leaning forward how do you interpret the reaction to this most of the reaction I got Bob was that any negative reaction to it was the absolute most ridiculous interpretation that anybody could ever make of anything it's out of control he's out of control and they do need to step in and fire him because otherwise it's not going to get across to him that he your reaction if you discipline like that is to back off he didn't he bored right on in continued on with with his berating of the kids and the kids expression told you everything you needed to know when my time on earth is gone and my activities here are past I want they bury me upside down and my critics can kiss my ass moving here in most of these incidents you don't feel you're guilty of any real misbehavior even if it's just boorishness on occasion shouldn't a guy find borz shouldn't allow a lot of people think profanity is boorish a lot of people think being gone with the media is bored some people would think grabbing the microphone and saying what you said the other day at the last home game is boorish shouldn't a guy as bright as you and as experienced as you have come to terms with that by now well if 17,000 people would have booed when I grabbed the microphone the other day then I would have paid attention to preaching of the flyer there this that's my choir the homing ttan that I live in Bloomington I don't live anywhere else but who has the authority to get on Bob night in the state of Indiana you know who has - Bob Knight has - and I can't tell you the number of times I've done that I can't tell you and I don't even discuss it the number of times I've gone home and I said I wish I wouldn't have gotten on that kid like that I wish I didn't think I had you know and I wish I hadn't got going the King no matter what you think about Bob night he is an extraordinary basketball coach under night Indiana has won three national championships eleven Big Ten titles and night coach the 1984 US Olympic basketball team that won the gold medal here we came over too far this time we got you guys up on top when he could have handled it back here and we needed to push back the other way but that's not bad but night is about more than just winning he's known for running a scrupulously clean program no cache cars or other illegal inducements to players and nights kids graduate almost all of us the absolute essence of coaching is you just can't come across laterally like you just got to be up and then back out I think you're using the sport to enable a kid that plays it for you to have an experience that provides him with the background to be successful I would far rather have a kid involved with a book than a ball Knight also contributes to the community on this night he's preaching the value of reading to kids as part of a program called Knight riedel's coach also led a drive that raised more than a million dollars for the Indiana University library the book is a lifetime the ball is just a fleeting moment and when Hollywood makes a movie about college basketball blue chips they go tonight Nick Nolte plays a character based on night and the coach himself does a cameo but for many the single indelible image of Bob Knight is this the chair and it's not the only controversial thing Knights ever done there was the dispute with a cop over practice time at a tournament in Puerto Rico and various other eruptions large and small but too numerous to list so far during this turbulent season even before the headbutt he had been ejected from two games and accused he says wrongly of kicking one of his players his own son Pat during a game if it is important to you to get a message across about integrity about academics and athletics and if 99% of your actions are in keeping with that if there's a purity in your approach to coaching the game why let that message be blurred alright by this other stuff you know a I'm not I have never once that I'm perfect I I make mistakes which really doesn't separate me from anybody else but I make them in big flamboyant ways that's been known by Tom and video clay I make them I make them in front of people but I don't make them flamboyantly somebody else creates the flamboyance around it somebody else if you demand discipline from your players are you liable to be fairly criticized if there are times when you appear to be undisciplined yourself oh yeah I think so I I think you got to take the words fairly out of it I think we got to take that out there am I liable to be criticized absolutely an architect here in town sent me a little thing any fool can criticize and most do and and so am i susceptible or liable to criticism certainly and sometimes fairly in the final essence of the thing what is throwing a chair am I the only coach in history that's ever thrown a chair a coat a clipboard water cooler or whatever I mean I join a long list of guys that have thrown chairs or thrown something I may have been the most infamous or the most famous chair thrower but certainly not the only one forget the critics what worries Knights friends is that he may go too far you and his brilliant career may end in an irrational incident like that of Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes who punched a player from an opposing team you've said that if you're ever out of control or over the line you'd know it you'd know to stop you'd know to walk away are you still sure you know yeah I think so I hope I know more now than ever I hope I've gotten a little smarter as time has gone on I hope I'm a little more aware of things that Bob I've said this before only I really know I've used this full fight critics row on row cloud the enormous Plaza full but there's only one man there who knows and he's the one who fights the bull here's a quote attributed in a Sports Illustrated article only to a friend of yours guy who knows you supposedly said bob is a horse's ass or words to that effect but he knows it and he tries like hell to make up for it I don't think I'm a horse's ass I think I'm a pretty big guy I think I'm a guy that and I've often said this to some of the sanctimonious self-righteous critics that I have I would hope that when Judgment Day comes they don't have to appear before Saint Peter's table with me and only one space available for both of us and the judgment being made on which of us has done the most for his fellow man I have no doubt that st. Peter will turn to me and said Robert pass through the gate nice relationship with the press is not exactly what you'd call warm take all you television people built an island for you put these writers in a cave under the Iowa there are exceptions though one is Bob Hamel of the Bloomington Harold times a night confidante you know I always always wondered why the basketball a coach is all predicated on anticipation this inevitably is going to lead to this wish you could see that a little bit better with where they're going the incidents because most of the time the the ramification that comes is predictable which leads us to the central irony of Bob night a man who insists his players anticipate and control themselves Bob night is college basketball's Raging Bull he sees a purity in the game and has an idealized notion of how it should be played and taught he is obviously a control freak and the basketball environment he creates at Indiana is his refuge from a larger world he can't control so when anybody a player a ref a reporter whomever or whatever violates his sense of order his sense of right and wrong in his world Bob Knight becomes enraged to him that rage flows from a principle and his thoughts justified and even useful but clearly there are times when it's a principle run amok if I hear one more time after you miss the shot I mean you're going to say okie going up and down those stairs until you can't damn stand up now is there anything about that you don't understand alright then we're going to really enjoy listen to you such oh I mean to the point where you kick damn get it out of your mouth anymore if he could get the extreme volatility under control would he have to throw the baby out with the bath would that modify his personality so much that all the good aspects of the intensity would go with it father that's Harvin answer because the coach has to be who he is former coach Pete Newell who won the national championship at the University of California 35 years ago he is one of Knights closest friends you know you can borrow you can borrow a play some board attention borrow this you can't borrow the personality of another coach Bob Knight the perfectionist the disciplinarian the question is does he push his players teenagers 20 year olds to high and act like you got one have you ever had a parent say to you that was just basketball if it was just academics my kid it'd be bound for Indiana but I just can't be sure about the relationship with Cody so forget it absolutely I simply say Bob that I'm going to be the toughest coach he complacent I'm going to be more demanding than any coach he can play for he's going to have to go to class he's going to have to do this he's going to have to be doing half he's gonna have to be if I have to there'll be more demands placed on your son at Indiana than anywhere he could go now Billy you've got to understand that too and we've got to start out right now with that in mind and if you don't think if you want to do your own thing if you want to play your game at Indiana we're going to play my game the overwhelming majority of nice players past and present swear by him and if they swear at him they don't do it in public listen to senior Damon bailing on the best and worst thing about his coach I think the best thing about coach Knight is that he's gonna give you everything he's got he wants everything that you've got you know as far as the worst thing you know I don't I'll stay away from that it's odd how this passionate intense man affects his players he always looks rumpled in his red sweater they wear ties he is difficult and brash they are polite and go to class playing for night is an experience unlike any other in sports the hell are you going with the ball he's moving away you got a defensive man coming in I mean damn it use judge use good judgment we can't play with that kind of judgment number 25 for the Hoosiers is Patrick Knight Bob Knight's son in a game this past December Patrick threw a pass away and Bob Knight well what do you think he did I kicked the chair I grabbed Patrick dirty Patrick did you think he had kicked you um no I know he's going for chair I mean my leg just happened to be where the chair wasn't mean I got grazed but I mean as you can tell he's going from chair Patrick knows that there's no way on the face of the earth I'd love more than than him and and he understands that he also understands he made a really careless bad blind path out on Pop Bob night in his way brilliant certainly principled but at times seemingly unable or just unwilling to see where toughness and integrity ends and where misbehavior begins people want power but often they don't understand those things associated with it and upon which it may even be dependent and refuse them all understanding people want to win you know people want national championship banners people want to talk about Indiana being competitive how do we get there we don't get there with milk and cookies we never have and we never will I saw a game last night a team came off the floor after playing rather poorly winning by a point and everybody's really happy maybe that's the way I should be maybe that's the way everybody wants me to be but these banners would not be hanging above my head if that's the way I would have been Bob Knight says it takes that to win national championship but coaches Smith at North Carolina and sure chef C at Duke the legendary Johnny Wooden at UCLA all won a lot of championships and they were all complete gentlemen is Bobby Knight out of control in your judgment in fairness I think he has a legitimate point when he says that at least some of these incidents are misinterpreted or blown out of proportion simply because it's him and his reputation precedes him on the other hand he fails to appreciate the consequences of these mishaps and he walks the line so often and leaves himself so little margin for error that in that sense he's out of control for example the young man Sharon Wilkerson told me he doesn't believe that night intentionally head-butted him and when he had a moment to think about it no hard feelings but night was right up in his face left in so little margin for error but in that sense bothers out of control and I think there's a tragic aspect to all this in addition to his obvious success as a coach Knight is one of the brightest people I have ever met in sports and he is capable of many unpublicized examples of great compassion and personal generosity the kid whose tuition he pays out of his own pocket after the kids eligibility has run out Landon turn of the former star player paralyzed in an automobile accident his ongoing concern for him and dozens and dozens of acts of kindness that don't fit into a soundbite or don't wind up on television and in an age of rampant hypocrisy in college sports he has an unshakable and unquestioned dedication to academics for his ballplayers that's a mess

Channel: Marty Jones

Views: 238,525

Rating: 4.5334606 out of 5

Keywords: Bob Knight, Bob Costas (Author), Basketball, indiana, university, coaching, Controversy (Quotation Subject)

Id: ErY6eeiEJhk

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2014