Can Bobby Knight save Northwestern? Alumni think so

	If Bobby Knight wants a real challenge, he'll leave Lubbock and head to Northwestern, where the Wildcats hold a 10-38 conference record over the past three years. by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

By Nina Mandell

You can sweeten it up with terms like "rebuilding season" or "a season that showed promise", but for Northwestern University basketball fans, it was bad all around. The Wildcats finished with an overall record of 13-18 and at the bottom of the Big Ten with a 2-14 conference record. And that's only a slight dropoff from last year's eighth-place finish, or the 2004 season's 6-10 conference record.

So after years of watching their beloved team linger in the Big Ten basement, two Northwestern alumni, Seth Reznik and Kevin Silverman, have started their own campaign to end the Cats woes with a simple message: Bring in Bobby Knight.

The 2003 grads started their Web site, http://www.knighttocats.com/, as they e-mailed each other about another double-digit conference tournament seed.

"There's not a lot of Northwestern basketball fans, but those who are are really proud," Reznik said. "They want to be competitive in the Big Ten."

So why pick the notorious chair-throwing coach to replace the mild-mannered Bill Carmody? It's easy, the two said. Knight has the same academic standards and graduation rates as the notoriously well-versed Northwestern, he has a love for the Big Ten thanks to his previous experience at Indiana, and he would chase out any player that wouldn't be good or tough enough for Big Ten basketball.

And they said they are sure Knight would love it in Evanston.

"It's got to be more than Lubbock, Texas," Silverman said. "And what bigger challenge is there (than Northwestern)?"

As for their actual contact with The General, the duo said they have yet to reach him. But they welcome fans and anyone who knows or has contact with Knight to notify him about the offer.

"We don't think Coach Knight even owns a computer, so we would love someone to print out the page and give it to him," Reznik said. "I would be happy to pick him up from the airport. We only refer to him as Bob Knight or Coach Knight on our Web site. We don't want to get in trouble like that guy who called him Bob."

So far the Knight advocates said they've gotten over a hundred signatures on their petition, and plan to eventually rack up enough to deliver the petition to Northwestern athletic director and university president Henry Bienen. They received coverage in the Chicago Sun Times, and are trying to recruit students with a volunteer form on their website to circulate the petition around dorms.

And while the petition is mostly in jest, the diehard fans said the joke doesn't change their message, for a school that hasn't seen glory from its revenue sports since the football team played in the 1996 Rose Bowl.

"We're just going to climb to the top of the mountain," Reznik said. "The basketball program has gotten a free pass for too long. We're just having fun, we think Northwestern fans should get to see more glory than the 1910 tug-of-war team."