University back off ultimatum; Knight to coach (lib Chancellor who provoked is under fire)

Yahoo Sports ^ | 2/3/04 | Dan Wetzel

[hispanarepublicana]

University back off ultimatum; Knight to coach

Yahoo! Sports Dan Wetzel
February 3, 2004

Bob Knight will not be suspended as head coach of Texas Tech for his public argument with chancellor David Smith. The Hall of Fame coach will take the bench Tuesday when his 19th ranked Red Raiders host Baylor at 8 pm. ET.

"He's going to coach, we just found out there is no suspension," said assistant coach Pat Knight three hours before tip-off.

Knight had been issued an ultimatum Monday night by Smith: Take a five-day suspension – causing Knight to miss games against Baylor and at Kansas – or be fired as the Red Raiders' head coach. But he had never accepted the suspension as it had been widely reported.

Instead Smith was hit with a wave of negative reaction from trustees, alums and students concerning the suspension and the ultimatum was lifted Tuesday afternoon. Knight will serve no suspension at all.

The incident occured Monday at local supermarket. Smith approached Knight at the salad bar and told him he thought he had been doing a good job this year, particularly in controlling his temper. Knight said he thought he had done a good job for the past three years and walked to the other side of the salad bar. Smith then followed him around and asked what issues the two were having.

One thing led to another and both men wound up shouting at each other. There was no physical contact and it ended fairly quickly. The two men are not close friends.

The Red Raiders, who averaged just less than 12 wins per season in the four years before Knight arrived, are 16-4 this season. While at Indiana in March 2000, Knight was investigated by the university after former player Neil Reed said the coach choked him at a practice in 1997. Two months later, Knight was fined $30,000, suspended for three games and placed under a "zero-tolerance behavior policy." In September 2000, Knight was accused of grabbing a student by the arm, cursing and lecturing him about manners after the coach was addressed, "Hey, Knight, what's up?"

That month, Knight was fired from Indiana for violating the behavior policy. Indiana president Myles Brand, now president of the NCAA, fired him for what Brand called a ``pattern of unacceptable behavior.'' This past December, Knight went into a profanity-filled tirade after an ESPN reporter asked about his relationship with former player Steve Alford, who was also participating in the interview. Knight later apologized.

Knight had brought Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to Lubbock to speak to the Law School and was entertaining him this week while preparing for the game

[Teacher317]

Hmm... same author, similar articles, but not the same??

[kittymyrib]

You are so right. The question this morning for the Tech regents should be, "Who hired this liberal punk Smith to be chancelor at Tech, and how soon can we get rid of him?" I strongly suspect this is the sour legacy of that Democrat loser, John Montford, who spent money like water for his own aggrandizement while chancelor. Obviously, it was some kind of political pay-off because this man is an absolute mis-match for the Tech presidency. West Texans are frontier people. They still have rules of proscribed behavior. One of them is that you don't insult someone in public unless you are ready to fight.

[Rockpile]

You know, were there not other "official witnesses" on the scene besides Smith and Knight? In other words Smith may have been doing some creative editing of the facts and then had to back down.

[Glenn]

Another Knight groupie.

Count me as one of them. He's a damn sight better than all the politically correct pansies who run the show.

He's a man's man if there ever was one.

Flame on.

[7thson]

I do not know the full story of Bobby Knight - just what the media shows. I know that he is a winning coach and a great recruiter. I also know that coaches like him are becoming rarer and rarer to find in any sport. The greatest coach of all time - Vince Lombardi - never had a losing season - ever - in anything he coached or was an assistant coach. He coached high school basketball and had a winning season - did the four corner stall before anyone ever heard of Dean Smith. If he had lived into the 70's as coach of the Washington Redskins, forget the Steelers being the team of that decade. However, for what we all know about Lombardi - how he motivated players, how he talked on the sidelines, how he treated players - like dogs as one former Packer put it - do you think the powers that be would want him around today?

[Teacher317]

I would have fired him for his profanity-laced tirade on ESPN. It was despicable.

You'd fire Shaq, then?

[ntrulock]

Great point. I was thinking of Woody Hayes also. I think Knight was at Ohio State about the same time as Hayes. Of course, Hayes had to quit after an incident in a game in which he slugged an opposing player.

[Redbob]

"You can make excuses for this bum all you want, but he's a hothead."

and

"Personally I prefer a slightly classier conservative as a coach:"

While Smith is certainly an ass, Bobby Knight is without a doubt in the same league as Woody Hayes, a man with no self-control who would punch an opposing team's player.

This isn't just about this one silly incident: Knight has a long and well-documented history of socially-unacceptable behavior, which is a nice way of saying he's a spoiled brat and bully, and always has been.
Tech should have known what they were getting when they hired him - a thug.

[mgstarr]

What I find disturbing is that character only seems to matter to some on this board when we're finding fault with the Left. I suppose some people aren't accountable for their actions so long as they are either winning or agree with you politically.

Those cries of a leftist assault on Knight sound amazingly similar to Hillary's rant about the VRWC.

[Stone Mountain]

And John Wooten, although a very good coach, also had a sugar daddy paying the players to go to UCLA.

Really? Who was it and how did that work? Haven't heard about that before...