Bobby Knight-the only reason I paid attention to college basketball

When it comes to sports, I consider it a forbidden subject I want to know absolutely nothing about. I have never been interested in sports. The only time I find any sport informative is when I want to complain. Case in point would be when I read that the New York Mets signed on Johan Santana for a six-year $137 million contract. It’s an issue I am not going to waste addressing here other than saying how stupid people are to be paying that player’s salary paying high prices for uncomfortable seats, junk food and beer.

There have only two moments in my life where I have been interested in sports. The first continues to be whenever the Dallas Cowboys blow their chances of going to the Super Bowl every year. You will never get any apologies from me Dallas fans on this matter. I haven’t liked “God’s Favorite Team” since Jerry Jones took over the franchise in 1999.

The second came in 2001 whenever a sportscaster mentioned the name, “Bobby Knight.”

It wasn’t that I wanted to find out if Knight’s team, the Texas Tech Red Raiders won or lost. I simply wanted to see if “The General,” Knight’s nickname, would do what he had done so many times before. He would churn out what would likely be another Oscar-nominated, foul mouthed performance. There is no doubt most anything he said would probably wind up as yet another addition to the already growing media library of famous clips and sound bites seen on http://www.youtube.com/.

For me, as far as college basketball was concerned, Bobby Knight WAS the show. If I was a student attending Indiana or Texas Tech, I most likely would have attended the games just to see how he’d react.

Now that era is over and I don’t think college basketball will ever be the same.

On Feb. 4, 2008, much to the surprise of fans but not those who believed he always took charge of his own destiny, Knight announced during mid-season he was retiring as head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders handing the reigns over to his son, Patrick Knight.

I paid no attention to Knight’s early controversial antics back in his days at Indiana arguing with referees. I knew nothing, for example, about the infamous 1985 chair-throwing incident where Knight reacted to a referee’s call during a game against the Purdue Boilermakers.

It wasn’t until I read his foul-mouthed, sometimes volatile yet informative interview with contributing editor Lawrence Grobel in the March 2001 issue of Playboy magazine that I became intrigued.

Here was a guy who had done a number of positive things for basketball since he began coaching in 1962, first at the United States Military Academy until 1971, when he took over as head coach at Indiana University. It was a place Knight probably thought he’d spend his entire coaching career until his retirement. That was cut short when he was fired after 29 years on Sept. 10, 2000 for grabbing freshman student Kent Harvey by the arm, yelling at him for not showing any respect. It was one among many incidents apparently where Knight had lost his temper.

Not surprisingly, it was that particular incident among many that Grobel discussed with Knight in the interview. Knight, who was getting so fed up with having to explain himself again about various incidents, at one point demanded that Grobel hand him the interview tapes so he can destroy them.

I don’t blame Knight for losing it when it came to his dealings with the press. My respect for the news media has eroded the past twenty years. I put journalists in the same category as the slimy lawyers who know full well, their clients did the crime, and yet manage to get them off anyway. They play favorites. They always print the negatives, never the positives. They never, ever give both sides of a story.

“These guys sometimes believe they've been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn't the case,” Knight told Grobel. “The thing that bothers me the most about the media is simple accuracy. There are as many guys in coaching who do a lousy job as there are in the media. Those are two professions that are a lot alike. There aren't a hell of a lot of really good coaches or writers.”

Today, if I want to get to the real story, I got to listen to conservative talk radio. So it was with great delight upon reading about Knight’s retirement, I found several clips of him on http://www.youtube.com/ berating the news media. It is a profession he once defined as “one or two steps above prostitution.”

I was practically short of cheering him on.

Who can blame Knight for getting upset when a sportswriter asked him one time, how did it feel to lose to a team after recently coming off of another win? The question is the equivalent of having a nurse come in and say to an old man suffering from terminal cancer who is about to go through another round of chemotherapy, “How are we doing today?”

When someone asked him if he ever has a “game face” when he is out coaching during the games, Knight told the reporter he had no idea what that was.

“In my entire adult life, I have never used the expression game face,” he said. “So I have no (expletive) idea what it means or what you are supposed to do.”

Knight then gave several humorous “game face” looks to the media.

When a reporter asked Knight back in 1993 how he thinks his player Damon Bailey will play in 1994, Knight said he would have to wait until then to see him play. He then grabbed an empty glass, banged on it a few times and treated it like it was a crystal ball.

“The image is fading…just a second, just a second…coming back, coming back, yes, yes…images are tough to deal with. Sometimes you got to get them in line,” he mockingly said. “Yes, I see…I see Bailey doing better.”

When the same reporter asked him practically the same question but in a different way, Knight picked up the glass saying “this is a (expletive) damn piece of cheap crystal here.”

“This isn’t expensive enough to answer all these questions,” he said. “Wait a minute there is something forming here, forming…it says, “What a (expletive) question.”

Like that Playboy interview that addressed a majority of Knight’s less-than-stellar moments, I wasn’t at all surprised upon reading about his retirement how practically every article I read about him brought up almost as many negatives as they did positives.

The fact is the guy isn’t perfect. None of us are but his impressive coaching record speaks for itself.

Since coaching in 1962, Knight racked up a combined total of 902 wins and 371 loses.

While at Indiana, he led his teams to three NCAA Division I Tournament Championships in 1976, 1981, and 1987, one National Invitation Tournament championship in 1979, and 11 Big Ten Conference championships in 1973, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, 87, 89, 91, and 93.

In the 1984 Olympics, his U.S. basketball team received the gold medal and in 1991, he was voted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

In looking up articles on the internet, not once did I find anything about him involved in illegal recruitment practices or drug problems; issues that often plague or put an end to a college’s prestigious athletic departments.

When Knight put on that Texas Tech sweater for the first time in 2001 after being hired as the university’s new basketball coach, he called it “the most comfortable red sweater I have had on six years.”

When Bob Weltlich, a former assistant coach Knight hired back in his days at the United States Military Academy and then at Indiana before taking a coaching job at Mississippi in 1977, he asked his former employer and friend during Knight’s 41st season what is it that keeps him coaching.

Knight said that he liked the game of basketball.

“Guys play chess forever,” he said “I might as well coach forever.”

I would have liked to see Knight reach a total of 1,000 wins. Perhaps at the age of 67, with 902 under his belt however, maybe there was not a whole lot more to prove.

So long as the Cowboys continue to blow their chances of going to the Super Bowl every year, I’ll always enjoy the team’s misfortune and the fans’ mourning periods. They only root for “God’s Favorite Team” when they are winning.

It’s been seven years though since I got interested in college basketball thanks to Bobby Knight. Now that he is retired from the game, it will likely be years, perhaps even decades before I ever show an interest in another sport again.

©2/19/08

Ledger, not the first nor the last celebrity to succumb to James Dean Syndrome

Whenever I hear about entertainment celebrities and musicians’ untimely ends at such young ages, as a result of their excessive alcohol and drug use, be it illegal or prescribed substances, the one word I come up with that best describes such people is “Loser” with a capital L.

There ought to be a medical name for celebrities with such ailments, like “James Dean Syndrome.” The latest star to fall into the category is Oscar-nominated actor Heath Ledger. His death Jan. 22 at the age of only 28 was the result of an accidental overdose of painkillers, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medication and other prescription drugs according to the New York City medical examiner.

To quote the phrase: “Live fast, love hard, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.”

I didn’t always feel this way.

A few days after actor John Belushi was found dead, as the result of a drug overdose in March, 1982, I found the comment one of my classmates made about the 33-year-old comedian to be rather cold. I won’t publish his exact words but to put his comment in my own words, he said how much of an idiot Belushi was for giving into drugs, thus ending what was a promising film career.

I can understand where he was coming from. I did not, for example, shed tears for former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith when she passed away last February; the result of an overdose on prescription medications. She brought her downfall on herself. If Smith was truly concerned about her newborn baby, she would have done everything in her power to stay healthy. If anything, I felt worse for her one-year-old daughter, Dannielynn Hope, who would now grow up without a mother.

I have never understood how people with such talent, who have everything they could want in life, could be so insecure with themselves that they need illegal or prescribed chemical substances to battle their inner demons.

The list of troubled celebrities seems to be growing daily starting with Britney Spears but not limited to Lindsey Lohan, Mischa Barton, singer Amy Winehouse, Gary Collins, Rebecca De Mornay, Tom Sizemore, Kiefer Sutherland and most recently Sean Young.

The sad fact is that behind all the blockbuster movies, television shows and rock albums is a small group of individuals who have either a hard time coming to grips with their sudden stardom, think they are invulnerable to everything, or are unhappy.

This seems to be the case for Heath Ledger, if you believe the comments in People magazine who said the star had been depressed and was not himself in the weeks prior to his death last month. Recently he had been spotted partying until the early morning hours.

“He looked like he was going through a hard time,” said one source on a movie set. “It really looked like all the traveling, filming and the separation from Michelle (Williams) and his child was really taking a toll.”

As in the case of the untimely death of actor River Phoenix in 1993, I did not want to believe the possibility that Ledger’s end was the result of drug use, even if it was all prescribed medications.

I did not care for the gay subject matter in Brokeback Mountain (2005) but I admired Ledger’s courage for taking the role, which earned him his first Oscar nomination, and tackling an issue that even today, despite growing acceptance, is still stigmatized by Hollywood.

Ledger had been working heavily during the past year shooting the Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. He reteamed with director Terry Gilliam on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus whose production is now suspended, and was in the process of directing his first feature film next year.

Upon the completion of his role as the villainous Joker in the highly anticipated Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, due out this July, Ledger described the role first made famous by Jack Nicholson back in 1989’s Batman, as “a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.”

As a result of working non-stop, the actor admitted to The New York Times back in November that he had had trouble sleeping, saying that even two Ambien pills was not enough.

"I couldn't stop thinking,” he said. “My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going."

The day after Ledger’s passing, one of my co-workers said you would think today’s rising stars would learn the harsh lessons that ended the lives of actors Belushi, Phoenix, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin and most recently actor Brad Renfro and R&B musician Ike Turner.

That lesson will continue to fall on a lot of deaf ears in the entertainment industry, despite warnings that comes from Ledger’s father Kim through the actor’s publicist on the day the toxicology reports were released.

"While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage."

Heath Ledger is not the first, nor will he be the last celebrity to succumb to “James Dean Syndrome.” The Associated Press reportedly already has Britney Spears’ obituary ready to go to press should she be next.

Ledger’s sudden departure, like so many others before him, is just another grisly tabloid case in which a promising young career is cut short. All that grieving fans are left with are small bodies of their work dwelling on what might have been.

©2/4/08