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A townie's take on a tragic tale
Posted: Tuesday May 16, 2000 01:26 PM
INDIANAPOLIS -- It was with more than a casual interest and typical journalistic rubbernecking that I witnessed Indiana's answer to the Clinton impeachment hearings. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Bloomington, as a rabid fan of Indiana basketball. One of my first memories is beseeching a young coach on the make named Bob Knight for an autograph at the Monroe County Fair. I skipped school to attend a rally welcoming the 1987 NCAA championship team back to Bloomington. I still confess to checking Indiana box scores and reading retired sports editor Bob Hammel's weekly column on the local paper's Web site. It was, then, with a deep and deeply personal sense of shame that I covered last weekend's public trial of Bob Knight. I was embarrassed for the university -- one that employs both my parents -- because, more than ever, it will be associated chiefly with its colorful basketball coach. Never mind that Indiana University boasts a world-class music school that ranks alongside Juilliard and the New England Conservatory, an art museum designed by I.M. Pei and one of the world's biggest libraries. The school is linked to Knight as inextricably as strands of DNA. As Doug Grissom, a staunch Knight supporter who stood outside Sunday's trustees meeting here clad in a T-shirt emblazoned STILL ON THE GENERAL'S WAGON, put it: "Indiana University is Bob Knight." I was ashamed for pusillanimous administrators afraid to stand up to Il Duce, resigned to employ tortured Jesuitical reasoning to justify his continued employment. I was abashed as they kept straight faces while invoking the "integrity of the university" within seconds of addressing allegations that Knight brandished "soiled toilet paper." I was mortified to learn that Indiana, as cynical academicians have long joked, really is "Bob Knight U., and he just leases it back to the state from time to time." How else to explain the revelation that Knight handpicked his "boss" -- athletic director Clarence Doninger, now a doomed man, who was previously Knight's divorce lawyer? How else to explain the troubling fact that two of the school's nine trustees had also done legal work for Knight? How else to explain that Knight's conduct, tantamount to low-grade felonies in other precincts, was not deemed to be at odds with "the best interests of Indiana University"? My deepest chagrin and sympathy, though, were reserved for the coach himself. Beyond the welter of allegations, the media mudslinging and the public goring of college basketball's prized bull lies a powerful contemporary tragedy. Like the great tragic heroes of literature, Knight has been beset by a classic Aristotelian "fatal flaw," in this case a powerful speedball of rage, ambition and intransigence. As in literature, by allowing this flaw to grow unchecked, Knight has brought about his own downfall. Yes, Knight kept his job. What a pathetic spectacle it must have been, this fiercely proud man who made obeisances to no one and betrayed no self-censorship, groveling for his job. What a pathetic sight it was reading the addled and touchy-feely 11th-hour mea culpa written by a man whose barometer for machismo once knew no limits. What a pathetic sight it will be when Knight achieves his Holy Grail -- breaking Dean Smith's alltime record for coaching wins -- only to realize that history will recall him more for the myriad bumps along the road. Had the trustees sent Knight packing on Monday, it would have been a disguised blessing. Like dozens of Indiana players from Larry Bird to Luke Recker, Knight would likely have found a basketball reprieve away from Bloomington. He would have made like Jerry Tarkanian, landed a new job at another Big Time U., broken the record and then disappeared into the sunset. As it stands, he remains in Bloomington, surrounded by the red-sweatered enablers who will continue to allow his fatal flaw to flourish. In the end, this may have been the most severe penalty Knight could have received. Jon Wertheim is a Sports Illustrated staff writer.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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