While at Sports Clips yesterday, I watched ESPN for a while after not having seen it in….well, since the last time a kid needed a haircut, and whose mug was front and center? Bobby Knight.
Bobby was at it again. I watched the clip and here’s my interpretation:
The kid, a tall forward, second-stringer (I think) gets out of position on a rebound and goes over the back. A foul is called. The kid hangs his head in shame as Knight calls a time-out. Knight is on the warpath. The reason? Not that the kid made an error, but that the kid didn’t pull himself together after the mistake and hung his head in shame. Bobby yelled at him, “Look me in the eyes!!!” When the kid didn’t, he shoved the kid’s head up via his chin and got his attention.
So, the household is divided. Can you guess which way this goes? The hubby says that Knight has an anger management problem, he should never touch a kid and that the bigger message he teaches the boys is to “lose it”.
I disagree. I played for an “animated” basketball coach. A whole new rule was made in Michigan High School basketball for him–a coaches “box” about five feet by ten feet long. Stepping out of the box netted the coach a Technical foul. Well, our coach laid in the box, stomped in the box, threw things in the box, kicked chairs in the box. Most of all, he screamed in the box. And yes, when we did stupid things (he never punished physical errors), mental errors, we paid. He would physically put our body into position. He would make us run until we thought we would die. I’ve thrown more free-throws…. But I digress.
We were a championship team nearly every year no matter how rag-tag the talent. I can assure you, winning surpassed hurt feelings. He expected the impossible from us. Imagine our surprise when we delivered. There were other teams who had “nicer” coaches I suppose, but they didn’t win much. Our team always won. We had a six year at home winning streak. No one beat us in our house. No one.
Not only that, but coach made us tough girls dress in dresses (and high heels) on game day while carrying a basketball. I kid you not. He bought us tear-away sweat-suits back in the day when only the guys teams had them. He was so tough with us we never feared an opponent. We did fear, screwing up, not following the plan. Our scrimmages were death matches.
Bobby Knight is cast in this passionate mold. He’s not a touchy-feely guy. Isiah Thomas played for him. Isiah’s mom wanted him to have an authoritarian father figure. I think more guys need an authoritative man in their life.
I’m torn. While I don’t think a player should fear for his physical safety from a coach, I think our society has turned into a bunch of pansy-ass wimps. Sometimes life is tough and you need to soldier through, gut it up. How do you teach that to a kid if everything is smooth and easy and wrapped in honey?
I know what Bobby Knight’s after. Winning is nice, but he knows that that kid hanging his head is going to end up in a world where he’s going to have to persevere, get back in the game mentally, after he’s screwed up. That’s life. When he screams, “LOOK AT ME!!!!” He is telling teaching the kid to stand tall and proud–even when making a mistake.
When I read recently that the Army was not being so mean to recruits (and I’m not talking abuse) and being more encouraging and kinder and gentler, it caused me to pause. The enemy won’t be nice. The enemy is brutal. How do you get mentally tough with out some metal-testing before the real deal?
We don’t need an Army of sissies. We need an Army of tough-minded winners. Heck, we need an society of tough-minded winners.
In my view, the world could use a few more Bobby Knights.
Having watched all the sports yak shows, I think they miss one thing: it all boils down to intent. Knight’s intent was not to harm the athlete. It was to motivate. He wasn’t angry with Pence for his physical performance; he was trying to change Pence’s mental outlook.
Knight didn’t slap the kid across the face. He didn’t choke him. He physically forced Pence to look up.
It’s Woody Hayes, inside his brain,
Hollerin’, makin’ him insane!
Grabbed his facemask, and he don’t know why:
“Scuse me while I hit this guy.”
Kinda fitting that you link Bobby Knight’s famous hard-core style with the Army softening up its most infamous taskmasters. I lived in mortal fear of my drill sergeants ten years ago, and I have adopted several of their antics into my own schtick as an NCO.
Now my trvia question to bring this all together is:
Riddle me this…where was Bob Knight’s first gig as a college head coach? A hint: It couldn’t be more fitting for a man famous for coaching like an old-school, insensitive drill.
My view?
Who cares? Anybody ever catch an elbow in a basketball game? Were the PO-LEECE called?
If the kid can’t handle a little slap, he shouldn’t be playing.
Bob Knight is a perfect metaphor representing what’s missing in our society today. We’re so concerned with “feelings” and “self-esteem” that anyone who demands excellence and isn’t afraid to
be upfront about it is deemed a bully. Talk to the players that played under Knight at Indiana and almost to a man they’ll tell you it was one of the most formative experiences of their lives and that Knight is like a second father to them.
Like George Patton, one of his heroes, Knight knows that many people need to be pushed to bring out their best. It may disturb the PC crowd, but that’s human nature.
Aggresive leadership, brusque to the point of obnoxious, is what trained the Marines that fought and conquered Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
My son currently starts on a high school hoops team for a coach like the one Melissa described, and his school last year won a California state championship after winning the title in their conference against school 2-3X their size. Their success has been directly related to the demands that their coach places on them for excellence, intelligence, commitment and flawless execution. Not surprisingly, these characteristics are also those needed to excel in life.
God Bless Coach Knight and it’s a shame there aren’t more like him.
Hear Hear.
Oh and Foreman….it was Army of course.
That kinder gentler shit is for the Army. That gets people killed.
Bobby Knight was mean to me. . . get over it. If he hit the kid in the head, well ok, give him a technical foul or something. But yelling at a kid? That’s what coaches do. They do that for 12 weeks at Marine bootcamp. You either get it or you don’t.
You can tell us that Knight is just after “motivation,” but you need to find a better excuse for his various escapades on and off the court. He’s a violent man who happens to be a winning coach, he’s not a winning coach because he’s violent.
On the other hand, there have been dozens of great coaches over the years who never raised a finger to their players, and who never had childlike fits on the court or the field.
Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry in football, for example, or most of the coaches in pro basketball.
Knight is an asshole, and needs to have someone clean his clock in a very convincing manner as a “teaching moment.”
I’m a long, long time Indiana fan. Knight is a neanderthal, but he’s a winner, and very very few of the kids who played for him speak badly of him. and nearly all of them are now productive and successful members of society.
Forever, I defended Knight to anyone who criticized him, but towards the end, I grew tired of having to defend him. If he farted really loud, it would lead on Sports Center. I just grew weary.
Interestingly, I feel the same thing about Bush. I defend him vociferously for many of the same reasons I did Knight (no, I’m not comparing the two men, just my reaction) – loyalty – sticking to principles you believe in – consistency.
I’ve grown weary of defending what I believe to be virtues. what does that say about me?
I had a good friend play for Woody Hayes, said he was the meanest sonovabitch on the practice field you could imagine. He also said he would take a bullet for the old bastard.
cirby,
You have no idea what you’re talking about. You obviously never played team sports or had anyone demand excellence from you.
Vince Lombardi was so hard on his players, many of his big, strong Packers were afraid of him. Bart Starr tells the story about how he went to Coach Lombardi after practice one day and begged him to stop being so hard on him as he felt it would be impossible for the QB to be a leader in the huddle if the other players viewed him as a whipping boy.
Lombardi was a demanding coach, as were Paul Brown, George Halas and every other coach enshrined in Canton.
If you want to see how a calm, unemotional coach performs in the NFL, take a look at how many Super Bowls Marty Schottenheimer has coached in. ZERO!
Get a clue….
”…I think our society has turned into a bunch of pansy-ass wimps.”
+1
BTW, another Bobby Knight story you never hear about.
A Canadian professor sent in a letter to Sports Illustrated many years ago about an incident that occurred to him and his wife, They were driving back to Canada after attending an educational conference in the US. After stopping for gas, he was heading into the station to pay, when a truck that had lost it’s brakes came screeching off the highway and plowed directly into the back of his car, in which is wife was still sitting. She was pinned in the wreckage, grievously injured and he was paralyzed with panic. Out of the crowd came a stranger who immediatly took charge of the situation. The stranger barked orders to the crowd milling around, organized them to extricate the woman, call for an ambulance and attend to the driver of the truck. Only when the professor and his wife were later being loaded into the ambulance did he see bystanders approaching this take-charge stranger to shake his hand. When he inquired as to who the good samaritan was that had appeared out of nowhere to help, he was told it was a college basketball coach by the name of Bob Knight.
There’s a story the Knight detrators and national media won’t tell you.
I was a student at Purdue when Thomas played for IU. I didn’t like Knight much, but I did respect him a great deal as a coach.
Knight’s greatest accomplishments weren’t the championships he led his teams to, or the NBA players he coached, but instead are all the other non-NBA players he coached who went on to be productive citizens and exemplerary men.
I bet you could find less than 20 of his players who “failed” at life, and even fewer who have a bad word to say about him.
I never played basketball, but I would have loved to have him as a football coach.
From Yahoo! Sports:
Full article here. Makes you think about sports media in this country…
<a href=”http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=dw-espn111406&prov=yhoo&type=lgns” target=”_blank”>
I saw Coach K from Duke the other day placing his team in Abu Garib positions to treach them discipline…oh, no, of course, that’s absurd.
In a like manner comparing a man who bullies, threatens and intimidates as a motivation is foolish. Perhaps, Marines need to be taught the value of unit over individual, but, and here we step out a limb, college basketball teams are not infantry squads.
Further, any decent sociologist/pyschiatrist would tell you that managers get better performance from not terrifying and toruting subordinates. You win when people respect you; not when they fear you, especially with high achievers anyway. Does Joe Torre shove Derek Jeter to the ground? Basketball players want to win and scaring them to death does not make them win. How many Sweet 16 appearances does this jerk have in the LAST 20 years?
Hell, Mike Davis took Knight’s kids to a championship game….and he didn’t even have to choke one of them
Neoconsstink,
Don’t you think there is room for diversity in style? To me the underlying traits all great coaches have is a love for the game and a love for the kids.
For every Coach K, there’s a Coach Knight. And even Coach K has had his head turn so red in rage that I have been worried he was going to have a coronary on the side-lines.
And Phil Jackson for all his Zen, dresses down one of his less favorite players in a book no-less. While it wasn’t physical intimidation, it sure was aggression.
Derek Jeter doesn’t need a heavy handed coach. Plus, he’s a professional athlete. Those athletes are paid for their job. If they suck, the market will correct it. At the professional level, the motivation better be internal, or what the heck is wrong with you.
College men’s sports, just like entering in the military, focuses around disciplining young, wild, hormonal boys and helping them grow into men.
The absolute worst college coach is Jim Boeheim of Syracuse. He lets the guys do whatever they want and then yells and screams and throws fits during the big games…..where they of course lose. He’s an impotent boob and it is painful to watch his talented teams achieve nothing year after year. (Carmello Anthony essentially coached the team, when they won, so I don’t want to hear about the miraculous exception.)
neoconsstink,
You offer a fatally flawed comparison. The star pro athletes of today make many multiples of what their coach earns. If the coach wants to keep his job, he must coddle, pamper and stroke the pro athlete.
Magic Johnson, got Paul Westhead fired with the Lakers. Latrell Spreewell physically assaulted PJ Carlisimo with Golden State Warriors, and no charges or even suspension was handed down. The examples go on and on.
The power balance in pro sports is completely reversed from college sports, where players seek to be a part of a program based on the reputation of the coach.
Coach K is a tough taskmaster with a foul mouth, just ask any player who’s been a part of his program. The PR job he does with the media means that side is never brought to light, unlike Knoght who didn’t give a damn about the media and often mocked their lack of knowledge. That’s why the media delight in savaging him and casting him in the most negative light every chance they get.
Mike Davis took a bunch of players that Knight recruited, taught and matured to the next level. What happened to IU basketball after Kinight’s recruits graduated/transfered? IU lost it’s premier status in the Big 10 and Davis has since been fired. that’s not a knock on Knight, it’s proof he built a greast program and that Davis just rode it’s coattails.
I just think Knight is a ill-tempered boor – but beyond that, eh, who cares?
hoopsfan:
Sorry, but in trying to put Lombardi and Knight in the same category, you’re betraying your ignorance of a lot of things, most especially pro sports.
Lombardi, while working his players hard (like Landry did in later years), didn’t take the Bobby Knight “You’re cowards and idiots and I’m going to throw a tantrum and assault you until you do things my way” route.
The fact that some of the greatest coaches in every sport manage to get good teams by belittling and abusing their players doesn’t mean it’s necessary, or even a good philosophy.
Sure, Knight (and others), manage to get good team performance by shouting down their players, but too many other coaches get some of the best results, ever, by making their players work hard through more positive means (in other words, “not throwing things at innocent bystanders when a player screws up on court”).
Please also remember that Knight also takes his attitude to other venues, like restaurants and sidewalks, where he assaults people physically over little or no provocation.
And no, this is not a good message for his team. Most people call it “criminal.” Actually, the courts also call it that, too.
gahrie:
You probably can’t find his players who “failed,” because the sports press only talk to the ones who survived the experience intact.
There are, almost certainly, a number of them out there physically abusing some second-rate high school players because that’s the only message they got out of the Knight school of coaching.
Anyone have video of Lou Holtz dragging his player to the sidelines by the face mask because the kid screwed up? If I remember correctly, the kid Lou Holtz was dragging around was a 6’5” tackle.
Nobody cried foul then. It looked like a father disciplining his son. The kid is probably better for it.
Considering Coach K learned at the feet of Knight, maybe someone should ask his opinion.
Bob Knight didn’t do anything wrong. If you think that was bullying or anything of the like, you have NOT played an organized sport or you got beat up one too many times. The MOST important factor in all of this is the young MAN had NO problem with it. THAT is all that is important. Anybody crying about Knight’s bullying, save it. Go cry for people that really need it.
Yeah, I’m sure the typical college basketball player would have no problem with telling the world that he thought Knight was out of line, since all that could happen was that he would get kicked off the team, lose all of his scholarships, have to drop out of college, and forfeit any chance of getting a slot on a pro team.
You know, what with Knight being so kind and forgiving and everything…
Cirby,
You are implying that the kid had no choice about playing for Knight to begin with. A kid at that level of play choose the coach, the program, the school. He’s hardly a victim.
Now as to bitching to the media about the coach, only a complete dumb-ass does that unless he wants to get into an intimate relationship with the Pine. Yes, the college coach has power.
C’est la vie.
A proud member of the conspiracy you might be, but a proud knower of fact (in that post) you are not. First, Coach K does not touch his players. That is the question here: degradation and assault versus berating and coaching.
Secondly, I live in Indiana and well remember the video of Knight choking Neal Reed. Knight had just choked a 19 year old kid. Was he charged?
Thirdly, Spewell lost a year to suspension
Good point, Melissa: NO one goes to play for Knight, not knowing what he’s getting into.
Great post, Melissa. I also played HS hoops in Michigan and I’m now transplanted here in Northern California where I’ve run across more than the average number of folks I’m used to who have never even touched a piece of sporting goods equipment that isn’t a hackysack, mountain bike, or a surfboard. I know it’s not for everyone, but I do believe that being a part of team sports at the high school level (at minimum) is extremely beneficial. It’s even better if you have a coach that will ride your butt. If at 16, 17, 18 years old one can finally understand that the reason a coach is yelling (screaming?) at you is NOT for personal reasons, but because you’re not doing your job the way it has been taught and practiced and the rest of the team suffers for it, then I can attest that it carries a lot of valuable experience, especially now in the private sector of business. Well, actually I’m in science. Bob Knight and other coaches have had their problems, but as many have said here, many of Knight’s former players would go through a wall for him. That says something more significant than some pinhead behavioral expert on ESPLame.
I have the distinct honor to be among the graduating class of Fort Sill’s first class of soldiers to go through the “new Basic” instruction regimen. I can say with experience that drill sergeants weren’t all softies. We were given initial instruction without shouting, or yelling, or embarrassment. There were no shark attacks the first moment we walked off the bus either. It felt more like a method more like “adult learner education” style…
<B>However!<b> When we screwed up we got more than an earful. There was not much holding back.
Oh, believe it or not, our drill seargeants told us that the Army actually hired consultants from MTV on tailoring Basic training for the new generation of recruits.
Eric,
So are you for it? Have you seen combat?
How are the mentally weak sifted out? I’m not interested in the 7% retained if they’re wetting their pants every time they have a scary job that needs to be done. Good grief!
It just doesn’t make sense from a psychological perspective. Some people have weaker constitutions and should NEVER be in a combat situation. If they can’t hack boot camp, they don’t belong over there. A nicey nice “New Basic” won’t sift the weak, so you Eric, will have the pleasure of trying to do your job and another guy’s too. That is just not good.
What do you think?
Knight does seem excessive, but since I am not a sports fan and have never served in the Armed Forces, I admit my opinion is of little value.
However,the riot that ensued at Indiana U. after his firing was just horrifying. It’s a f*cking game, for f*ck’s sake. When students riot when a coach is fired, something is terribly wrong. That gave him and the university a black eye that won’t go away for a long time.
No, I haven’t seen combat, I’m actually in the Minnesota National Guard and I still have bundles of training left (I joined as OCS). I’m also 33 and at the upper end of the ages in my battery.
How did they winnow out the “mentally weak”? I can’t say they did at all. Not a single soldier was allowed to get recycled for any reason other than physical fitness reasons. We had one nutjob strike another soldier in the face with his flaslight, the soldier who was hit wanted to press charges and the drill sergeants couldn’t stand the twit with a screw loose. They wanted to recycle him as he had numerous foul-ups, mouthed off the the drill sergeant constantly. Battalion commander insisted ever soldier graduate Basic who passed PT.
I never went on to AIT because I have Guard OCS training back home in Minnesota, so it is likely that AIT drill sergeants can put the fear of God into those who didn’t get it in Basic. I can honestly say that the young soldiers in Basic quickly caught on that drill sergeants couldn’t do hardly a thing but threaten recycling… The worst offenders never did get recycled, even the dorks who smuggled in Black and Milds and smoked then in the stairwell outside the laundry room. Everyone noticed nothing happened… except for a drill sergeant coming into our barracks and smoking us for a bit. And give the offenders extra duty sweeping the pad.
Discipline was horrible and seemed to never come together the whole time we were there.
How is the Army sifting the psychologically weak out? It is possible that the experience of Army Basic DID make them stronger, I can say I gained from the experience. I never experienced the “old” Basic so I can’t compare it to anything. I know the Army had pilot programs for this before they put it in place Army-wide so they must really have found it of value. I don’t want to second guess the decision… but it is also possible that the winnowing will happen during AIT instead of during Basic.
Wow, Eric,
The picture you paint is disturbing. Who wants an armed crazy loon driving a humvee?