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Knight is too easy a target
Posted: Thursday May 25, 2000 10:30 AM
I found myself rather fascinated by the smug attitude exhibited by both other colleges and media in l'affaire Bob Knight. It was not good enough to castigate him for his sins, nor to criticize Indiana for being too lenient. No, associated with condemnation of both coach and college was the need to effect superiority: Oh, what a bunch of toadies the president and trustees at Indiana are. Why, no other distinguished institution of higher learning would tolerate such an ogre in its midst. The most popular expression was that "Indiana had been taken hostage by Knight." And indeed that is the case. But pray tell me: What other big-time sports university does not suffer the same fate, every day, institutionally? Is there any Division I school in America that isn't held hostage to its athletic department and powerful alumni sports fanatics? The scandal of shoehorning undeserving athletes into college and then, fraudulently, letting unprincipled coaches keep them eligible to profit the university is an open sewer that stretches from sea to shining sea. Knight's critics repeatedly made the point that, because of him, poor IU is known only for its basketball team. So what's new? How many Americans have ever known anything about Notre Dame or UCLA or Texas, except that they field good teams? St. Francis of Assisi could return and settle in Bloomington, Indiana, to coach basketball, and nothing more would be known in the land about Indiana's English department or its music program than is the case now under Coach Knight. Indiana may be hostage to one coach. But American academia is hostage to big-time college athletics. The New York Times did offer some sense of proportion Sunday with a front-page article detailing how state college presidents everywhere have succumbed to the financial and public relations demands that big-time football and basketball inherently produce. Certainly, from a long-term view, Knight got off easy -- although the fact that he was never adequately punished in the past by the university did provide the university with the jabberwocky legal rationale that the omissions of the fathers justify the forbearance of the sons. But, still, one could not help be struck by the smug prevailing attitude that punishing Bob Knight would clear our consciences so we could get back to the games. Lord knows Knight is an easy target. His sins, you see, are so visible. But as bullying and crude as Knight is, it is a shame that the same kind of righteous indignation directed toward him exists almost nowhere else in the face of the pervasive institutional corruption that scars college sports. The media that shakes their head in disgust when Knight abuses a player only wink at a whole system that abuses honor and academia. If we are content to let our disgust for Knight and our disappointment in the officials at Indiana satisfy our indignation, then the prevailing system, with its scoundrels and scholarships, will just roll on. In a way, Knight, like John Rocker, makes it too simple for us. We throw obvious primitives like them to the wolves, so that our wolves can keep on running wild. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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