Bob Knight’s beef with Indiana was the result of an “emperor” losing power



You may know Bob Knight from the many NCAA and Big 10 championships he won as coach of Indiana University, but more likely, you know him as the coach who threw a chair.

For over two decades Bob Knight could behave however he wanted with no repercussions. Throw a chair, scream at a ref, scream at a player, choke a player, curse at a player… wait… choke a player?!

When that one hit national press years after the alleged incident occurred, IU was like… “uh, we should probably do something.” Guess who didn’t like that? (Bob Knight) (sorry to give away the answer right away).

Written and produced by: Clara Morris
Directed and edited by: Charlotte Atkinson

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29 thoughts on “Bob Knight’s beef with Indiana was the result of an “emperor” losing power”

  1. Christ, some sports fans are blind to the absolutely horrible crap some of their heroes do… Can't get over they celebrated him and put him in the Hall of Fame after all the garbage he had done.

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  2. I hated Bobby Knight growing up as a Kentucky fan. The older I got the more I appreciated the man. By the time he got fired I was officially a Bobby Knight fan. The world needs more Bobby Knight's and less people cutting their peckers off and drag queen story hours. I loved when he came back to Indiana, I even teared up.

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  3. Bobby Knight should have ran for governor of Indiana after he got fired. He would have easily won. I'm a Kentucky fan and I came to love Bobby Knight. God bless the man.

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  4. Bob Knight, the man who popularized and pioneered the Motion Offense, which is used and effective today including its elements incorporated into the modern offenses through its variations (5-out, 3-2, 4-1, and Dribble Drive).

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  5. As a Kentucky fan I still hate bob knight but coaching ain’t about you and I don’t think that’s what these big coaches get it’s all about the kids so not showing up for your kids to celebrate their championship is ridiculous

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  6. You MUST know this about me, to understand where, when and how I grew up, and why I think the way I do about things: I was born in Seattle in 1973, where I grew up. Sonics and Blazers fan. Japanese-American (showing HOW I grew up). Because I am Japanese-American, I HATE Bob Knight! Everything, I repeat EVERYTHING is about LOOKS. I thought that people from Ohio and Iowa were NICE. Actually, BLACK athletes from Ohio ARE nice: LeBron James, Ron Harper. Some White sports figures from Ohio are nice: Jim Tressell. However, I can't believe how many MEAN White people there are from Ohio: Bob Knight, Bob Stoops, Mike Stoops, Donald Korn, and other mean White men from Ohio.

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  7. Why do I hate Bob Knight because I'm Japanese-American? If I asked him to say bad things about the Japanese, he looks like a man who would have NO problem doing so! He was in the military, so I'm sure he has NO shortage of Pearl Harbor, kamikaze, Iwo Jima and mushroom cloud jokes. Think about all of the "Your grandparents and father were in an internment camp" insults Bob Knight could throw at ME, effortlessly.

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  8. Knights influence extended to high school ranks across all sports. Being from Illinois, everytime we played an Indiana team, there were always way too many assistants and they would all be vocal wanting to be Bobby Knight.

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  9. Hello all!

    WARNING: the following is a sincere question, but also doubles as a social bellwether, and I therefore want to alert anyone who may wish to distance themselves from such an experiment, as well as those who might genuinely be hurt by the theme. That theme concerns Mr. Knight's comment on sexual violence, and the experiment that runs along with it is meant to be a gauge of social censorship from both this platform and from my peers. You have been cautioned, and I hope this can clear my conscience somewhat if pain does result from the inquiry.

    I will attempt to phrase any sensitive wordings in at least two increasingly obscure ways, within [square brackets / rectangular parentheses / the upright things around these statements] so that I can be certain of getting the question out to you in some semblance of its original form if YouTube does have a way of rejecting the language out of hand, and I will NOT alter it under any other circumstance. The relative profusion of these alternate terms will indicate how carefully I THOUGHT I should treat the subject, and the modifications themselves will be reflected on as little as possible. I will record this message entirely before posting it, and compare the two versions afterwards. Should there be a need to do so, a one-time edit of this message will indicate any obligatory modification with this asterisked format: **content removed for REASON X** or **content removed for UNKNOWN REASON** .

    My aim here is, as near as possible, to speak the manner I might have thought out loud to myself (hopefully in a first and only draft) and to see whether my suspicions about what I can and cannot say here are indeed accurate, and thereafter in how strict a manner our free conversation is being policed on the internet. I have never done this before, however, and may a) be wrong about what might occur if I transgress the bounds of an external authority's opinion on good taste and b) not have quite as solid a handle on what "good taste" might constitute. In either case, this preamble has gone on long enough, and I hope and believe I will be able to work with whatever the result will be.

    When I first heard bobby Knight's [metaphor on rape / metaphor on sexual violence / metaphor on abuse / metaphor on intimate relations / metaphor at 2:19], I thought to myself "I wonder if I could even discuss the morality of the statement within the supposedly censorious climate the Western internet culture has created". I then immediately thought that I shouldn't discuss the statement because I might offend some people. I THEN thought that perhaps it was even impossible for me to get the question out because there might be profanity screens for the words I used, at which point I realized that there was an obligation for SOMEONE to test the limits of where "social policing" began to overlap with "mechanical policing", and came to the conclusion that since I had not heard of anyone doing so myself, the duty therefore rested squarely on me to determine exactly where the boundary lay.

    I am not accustomed to using inflammatory language or profanity, but my course seemed clear: I had a question, I had stopped myself from asking that question out of politeness, I had realized that there might be other factors at play, and I had realized that it was my very politeness that could act as a screen behind which I was hiding from myself the true level of freedom I enjoyed. The screen had to be tested, and the question was legitimate, so I had to see whether I could ask it. I spent fifteen solid minutes devising the methodology stated in my preamble, and then began writing this without having reflected on it any further.

    This being the case, I wish to ask you all: what would be your responses to the quoted metaphor if YOU were the ones [being raped / being molested / being violated / being assaulted / being accosted] ? My immediate response was that I would obviously always try to fight back, but under a strictly literal reading of the word "inevitable" I had a moment of doubt. If I truly knew there was nothing that could be done about the situation (a stretch for any semblance of certainty, to be certain), might I find a different opinion? Is the statement even controversial at that point? From a strictly utilitarian perspective, is there a reason NOT to attempt finding some sort of joy in the act once the value of struggle is rendered moot? Would it possibly, morally speaking, even become an evil act under some ethical standards to reduce the total amount of pleasure being attained in the moment?

    I have never been [raped / molested / violated / abused / accosted], however, and I don't know whether the question can be formulated in offense of some other consideration. If you have any thoughts on any of this, your input would be welcomed.

    I hope this finds you all well,

    -Stéphane Gérard

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  10. I’m a Bob Knight fan he has old school values that I approve however did he handle everything correctly No absolutely not, but the good he did for people far outweigh the bad you look at the crime cover up that goes on with universities & coaches you never had to worry about those things with Bob Knight he ran a clean program that many today won’t do. Again perfectly handled by Knight no he went overboard with people, players & other officials sure but again the good out weighs the bad.

    What the university allowed Kelvin Sampson to do was way worse drug use, recruiting violations, paying money illegal at the time.

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  11. Indiana University was more than happy to tolerate him as long as they had an A-list basketball program and were Final Four contenders every year. But not for a program that was going 20-10, finishing in 5th place in the B10 and losing in the first round of the NCAA's every year. He had become a net negative for them by the late '90s. There was no upside to keeping him around if they were just going to be a mediocre program.

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  12. Why is it you Knight haters never mention facts like these. Knight graduated approximately 98% of his players because he demanded that they go to class. The NCAA average during his tenure was considerably less. The overwhelming majority of his former players hold him in high regard and have vigorously defended him against his critics. He was never sanctioned by the NCAA for cheating even though he disagreed with many of their ridiculous rules.He put academic and athletic expectations on his players. This in turn taught them to expect accountability from and for themselves. All but a very few of his former players, most of whom never made to the pros, became successful adults and credited Knight for that because of the discipline he instilled in them.
    I could go on but you get the idea. Bob Knight is a flawed human being like the rest of us and definitely was over the top. However, he did exactly what he was paid to do. He won lots of basketball games, he graduated his players, and he kept the program free of NCAA violations.

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