Bobby Knight, the sixth-winningest coach in NCAA Division I men’s basketball, has died at the age of 83.
I spent a few of my earliest years in Bloomington, and one of the first sentences I put together was “Bobby Knight!”
I wonder if they’re going to bury him upside-down.
Bye, Bobby Knight. Goodbye. See ya. Adios. Later.
You’re dead, right? Lie back and enjoy it.
The General has thrown his last chair.
@bobot - I like your edit! What an f-ing pig he was.
I hope his style of coaching dies with him. Tyrannically berating people is no way to coach. Hell, it’s no way to deal with people, in any capacity.
OMG! Best zinger ever! only had to wait, what? 40 years?
Instead of throwing dirt on the coffin in the grave, mourners will be asked to throw chairs.
He was despicable. I have a BA from IU. It kept him employed for decades just because he won games; that he was abusive and a misogynous pig didn’t matter. This was also a school, the office of disabled students of which, was down a narrow flight of stairs. I am not making that up. It was a school that had a bigger landscaping budget than the budget for scholarships.
John Cleese once said that Basil Fawlty was based on a real hotelier he dealt with who acted as though guests got in the way of his running an hotel. Well Indiana University acts as though students get in the way of their running a university.
Of course they employed Knight for 3 decades.
The man was successful, no doubt, but I certainly didn’t like him. He was crass, arrogant, and obnoxious.
Plus, he may have been the worst color announcer ever. At least until Bill Walton came along.
Knight had incredible success with the Motion Offense. He won three National Championships with it in 1976,1981,1987!
Dusty May took Florida Atlantic to its first Final Four in 2023 by using and updating what he learned working for Bob Knight.
It is sad that Knight’s personal demons often over shadows his success as a coach. I read A Season on the Brink fifteen years ago. John Feinstein did a brilliant job getting beyond Knight’s gruff exterior. Bob was a extremely complex man. I believe he could have won even more National Championships if his temper hadn’t marred his career. He was his own worst enemy.
RIP
Did it provide any insight into why he was so abusive? I have to presume that’s what he endured as a kid himself.
The only thing Feinstein noted was Knight was into theatrics to motivate players. He once banned the team from using the comfortable IU locker room because it was for winners. He made the players change in a storage room until they played better.
Psychology is a common tool for coaches. But Knight would go in to chew ass and motivate. He’d work himself up into a real rage. 
Feinstein claimed the players got too cautious and were afraid to make mistakes.
Feinstein pointed out examples of Knight’s loyalty. A former staff member left to coach a team. Knight gathered his staff and went to the first game. Feinstein wrote that Bob scouted the players and wrote coaching notes for his former employee.
I’ve read Bob and his former player Mike Krzyzewski had a close friendship for years. Duke beat IU several times and Mike’s coaching stats strained the friendship. Mike gave the Hall of Fame Induction speech for Bob. I hope they grew closer in retirement.
I doubt anyone knows why Bob was so passionate and easily angered.
It could be that he was just an asshole. It doesn’t take away from his coaching achievements, but it does explain a lot.
Passionate and personal demons are a hell of a way to describe an abusive asshole with a predilection for physical assault.
I am happier today than I was yesterday.
His style of coaching died years ago, at least among schools that have any genuine national title ambitions. The ubiquity of one-and-done players, the transfer portal, and NIL have transferred power from the coaches to the players, and elite talent don’t have to put up with someone approximating Knight’s bullshit in order to launch their career.
Back around the turn of the millennium, I covered my fair share of men’s college basketball games. I have to say, I’m quite happy that I never had any opportunities to rub elbows with Bob Knight. If I had, I imagine I would have sat really far back in the interview room and tried my very best to not give him any reason to know that I was even there.
I remember seeing him on TV a bunch of times in the 90’s, and every single time it hit me like a brick how completely bitter, angry, and joyless he was about absolutely everything, constantly. He never laughed. He never cracked jokes. He never made a clever zinger. He never said “That reminds me of a funny story.” or “You had to be there.” or “That’s not how I remember it.” He had the charisma of a lead pipe. Why ESPN ever bothered pointing a microphone at him mystifies me.
The worst part was how in the insular midwest basketball culture, some early success meant that a coach got a free pass on everything forever and ever. Everyone who had a problem with him got demonized. Every player who didn’t like being constantly berated and occasionally physically assaulted was a whiny crybaby who couldn’t take discipline. Every newsperson who reported the truth about his blowups was a biased bought-and-paid-for shill. Every ref who gave him a technical was crooked. Every NCAA official and athletic director who tried to crack down on him was a petty overreaching meddler who didn’t understand tough love and good old-fashioned values. Seriously, how would you like to have been a basketball rising star with an incredibly lucrative NBA career on the horizon if you just get through college in good shape, and you get thrown to this perpetually angry vicious petty dictator whom absolutely everyone backs 100% against you?
If he is buried face down, it’s not my lips that are going to be gracing his rear end, that’s for certain.
I think this is what made him such a terrible color commentator. He seemed to wind up on a lot of Big XII games that I watched, and I just got the impression from listening to him that he’d rather be just about anywhere else than where he was, doing what he was doing. Like he just hated being there, and it came across in his delivery, that barely suppressed anger.
Knight did really well the first season at Texas Tech. He still got in trouble. He almost got in a fight with the Chancellor at a sald bar.
I remember lmao at the thought of lettuce flying.
His only real friend was the Athletic Director, Gerald Myers who had coached against Knight. He hired Knight and had to pull him off the Chancellor of Texas Tech. Crazy stuff.