Holy crap, Bob Knight resigned from Texas Tech – midseason.
“He said he was tired and that it was best to go ahead and do it now,†Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance told The Associated Press. “I think Bob is through with coaching. I think he got to the point where it wasn’t fun for him.â€
Update The Indy Star has a more extensive report now. It appears that Knight is stepping down to help turn over the coaching reins to his son, Pat Knight. Seems like my biggest disappointments with Coach Knight have to do with Pat Knight. I never really thought Pat deserved a spot on the IU teams and thought the quality of the teams suffered. Mainly I noticed him when I got to law school in the fall of 1993. Pat got most of his playing time and there was a sharp drop off in the quality of the teams after the graduation of Calbert Cheney and the rest of the class of ’93. It always seemed peculiar to me that the coach’s son got to play at one of the premiere basketball colleges in the country. Maybe the drop-off in performance was just coincidence. Now Knight is leaving Texas Tech midseason. The official reason is that he’s tired. But, come on. You’ve coached almost 1,300 games. Ten more isn’t going to kill you. Seems to me like, once again, he’s doing something a little odd for the benefit of Pat. This way Pat Knight can be sure of some time as head coach with less temptation to consider the larger pool of potential head coaches you’d have during the offseason.
Maybe my views are colored by watching too much politics — where its often advantageous for a retiring politician to step down in the middle of a term to give someone in the politician’s party some incumbency time before the general election.
Regardless of all of this Knight was clearly a great coach, and I certainly appreciate all of the great Indiana teams I was able to watch over the years thanks to him.
Update 2 The Hoosier Report has a good post on the subject. My speculation that the mid-season timing was done to help Pat appears to be wrong.
I thought he was dead.
I’ve always been mixed about him. I liked that he really (appeared) to stress education to his players and wanted their conduct to be very professional.
However, I have also always felt that a coach should lead by example, and yelling fits to refs or players are just out of line.
It’s like he is 1/2 Belichick and 1/2 Dungy. Freaky.
Doug, I think your opinion of Pat is dead-on. I don’t think much of him as a player or as a person. He seems to have all of his dad’s madness but none of the genius. But Bob didn’t have to resign midseason to guarantee Pat the job. A few years ago, PK and TT entered a contract much like that of the Colts’ Jim Caldwell, making him the head coach designate. I’m not sure exactly how the contract is written, but my guess is that upon Bob’s resignation or retirement, Pat’s contract converts to a head coach’s contract for X number of years with the usual buyout provisions and the like. Again, I don’t expect big things from Pat, but even if Bob had waited until April there wasn’t going to be a search.
As I said over at the blog, I recall Knight speaking favorably of the timing of Dean Smith’s retirement (September). The essence of Knight’s comment was that he never looked forward to the recruiting and alumni schmoozing of the off-season, so he wouldn’t want to retire after the season, but that when he became sick of the basketball, he would know it was time to go.
Coach Knight could be an ass. A lot. But I always thought it was interesting that almost all of his players would defend him. Not everyone would. But not everyone responds to that throwback kind of discipline, shouting, etc.
I didn’t know Neil Reed, but I would see him in the Union on a couple of occasions and from the way he carried on I guess I wasn’t surprised that Knight might find him to be kind of chokable. I recall when people were talking about “Hey did you hear Knight choked a player at practice?”, my wife said, “I has to be Reed”. Not to defend Knight at all. But Reed was kind of a punk, and punk and Knight I would bet didn’t always mix well.
People who have been through a military boot camp tend to not understand what all the fuss was about. I understand screaming and yelling at adults isn’t the best way to get things done, and as the years have gone by plenty of coaches have passed Knight by behaving with more respect for his players. That just wasn’t how Knight was going to do it.
I’ll never forget the day he was defending himself regarding the kid he supposedly attacked. That live news conference was on tv the same time my wife and I were waiting for her to be wheeled in for her cesarean for our first child. The doctor was running late; and I only got to see part of the conference before they took us to the OR.
Of course two days later he was canned…