Tuesday night, class was in session in Bloomington, Indiana. The professor was Bob Knight, fallen hero. The student was Jeremy Schaap, son of a legend. And Knight put on a clinic in arrogance and denial that constituted a proper and fitting final lecture as deposed basketball coach/unquestioned despot of Indiana University.
Knight is basically a walking, talking, 6-foot-4-inch middle finger, fully extended at all times in a show of defiance to the world's norms of civility. So when IU president Myles Brand finally stopped at the local Backbones-R-Us outlet and fired Knight last weekend, you knew that somehow, some way, the man they call "The General" would bully his way onto the airwaves to "give his side of the story" -- i.e., publicly deflect all blame toward everybody but the man in the mirror.
ESPN was apparently first in line to grab the ratings bonanza that accompanied this rant. Knight has been painted in a positive light in the past by the boys in Bristol, whose interviewers have tossed him more softballs than Eddie Feigner. But Digger Phelps and Roy Firestone were evidently too busy swapping interviewing tips with Ahmad Rashad, and since Landon Turner isn't actually employed by ESPN, they had to look elsewhere this time around.
Of course, he would have preferred no interviewer at all -- just a podium, a teleprompter, and a 30-minute treatise on truth, justice and the Hoosier way, no questions please. But he knew that setup wouldn't draw the bright lights of television, just a few sycophants from the local media corps. So he agreed to a rare compromise.
Knight, who is a longtime friend of journalist-for-all-seasons Dick Schaap, hand-picked Schaap's 31-year-old son Jeremy to conduct the interview. Maybe he thought he was doing an old pal a favor. Maybe he thought he could browbeat, intimidate and terrorize a reporter nearly half his age. Either way, Knight didn't quite get what he expected.
He got an interviewer who went after Knight the way he himself goes after referees. Schaap asked the tough questions. He wouldn't let Knight stray off course. He even called Knight on statements that appeared to be contradictions -- that he cancelled his basketball theory class because he feared he'd violate the zero-tolerance clause, yet he had no qualms with grabbing a student in the hallway to lecture him on manners.
And when challenged, Knight flashed his infamous temper. Sure, there were times when Schaap's interruptions were a bit annoying. But hey, interruptions are a Gen-X hallmark, not unusual for a generation whose attention span was crafted by fistfuls of Ritalin, whose media exposure has graduated from Saturday morning cartoons to music videos to TV news sound bites and the Internet.
And more often than not, Schaap merely cut off digressions that were gratuitous or self-serving, such as when Knight tried to paint his son, Pat, as the biggest victim of this whole debacle. Schaap pointed out that Knight had come to do an interview, and he was merely trying to get answers to his questions.
But because Knight is the ultimate alpha male, he simply cannot abide by doing anything on anybody else's terms -- which, of course, is how we got here in the first place. For awhile, he tolerated Schaap's intrusions the way a bull tolerates a fly buzzing around his hindquarters. But as soon as he found an opening, Knight's traditional mean-spirited ways surfaced to belittle the source of his annoyance.
After one tense exchange, Knight fell silent, and you could tell as his sneer melted to a smirk that he was weighing a particularly snide insult. You could practically see the little angel and devil wrestling on his shoulder, but soon the angel was down for the count and the devil was smoking a Cuban cigar and proudly showing off his championship belt to all his devil friends.
"You've got a long way to go to be as good as your dad -- you'd better keep that in mind," Knight seethed. Of course, the statement was about as relevant to the conversation as a trombone solo at a Dr. Dre concert, because 99.98% of sports journalists have a long way to go to match the class and résumé of Dick Schaap.
To his credit, Jeremy Schaap would not allow Knight to shame him. "I appreciate that," was his only response, before returning to his previous line of questioning.
But Knight's insults and intimidation eventually achieved their desired goal. Toward the end of the interview, Schaap stumbled all over what was already a rather tortured metaphor -- Knight's saga as a dramatic tragedy. You know, heroic figure and great man is brought down by a conspiracy or a fatal flaw, that whole Oedipus Rex/Julius Caesar/Othello thing.
Knight's eyes flashed and he launched into a bitter retort about how losing a job is not a tragedy, but that his wife's friend dying of breast cancer is. Jaws clenched, neck reddened, his summary -- "I just wanted to define tragedy for you" -- was the most condescending remark of the evening.
The problem is, Knight knew exactly what Schaap was getting at. He's extremely well-read and highly educated -- my God, he'd earlier dropped a St. Thomas Aquinas reference into the discussion, as though he were auditioning to replace Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football. He clearly knows the difference between dramatic tragedy and human tragedy.
But he also knew that the interview was coming to an end, and that it hadn't been the cakewalk he'd expected. He saw one final opening to display his sanctimonious nature at Schaap's expense, one last chance to belittle the cub reporter and put him in his place. And because self-control has never been Knight's strong suit, he ground his heel into Schaap's big toe one last time before fading into the darkness.
Now, I'll admit that I've never been a big fan of Jeremy Schaap's work in the past. The word "nepotism" sometimes flashes through my head when I see him on the screen. But I will be eternally grateful that on this night, he helped illustrate that if Brand had any misgivings about firing his basketball coach, they were unfounded.
The professor can take his textbooks and teach his class somewhere else next year. After 29 years, Indiana University is finally ready to turn its basketball program over to a coach who's both a scholar and a gentleman. And it's about time.
Gonzalez: Don't Fence Me In
You probably won't believe this, but I had a great column all planned on the Detroit Tigers' possible plans to move in the fences at their brand-new home, Comerica Park, in hopes of appeasing slugger Juan Gonzalez and signing him to a long-term deal.
But then my colleague Edd beat me to the punch with a witty and insightful column on the very same issue earlier this week.
Yeah, you'd think we'd communicate a bit better, but hey, we sit a whole 50 feet away from each other -- what do you expect around here?
Anyway, now I'm left with some killer notes and quotes that I'd like to pass along to support the points that Edd made in his column -- namely, that moving in the fences at Comerica would be a sad, terrible mistake, especially for a guy like Juan Gonzalez, who has threatened to leave Detroit if the Tigers don't make their new park more homer-friendly.
5. Barry Bonds -- Hop on my back, boys, and I will take you to the promised land.
4. Tony Banks -- In the ultimate statement game for the Ravens, he makes the ultimate statement.
3. Venus Williams -- Style, grace and a killer forehand. We have seen the future of women's tennis.
2. Mike Anderson -- You're beginning to think that you could run behind the Broncos' offensive line, aren't you?
1. Tiger Woods -- We could probably just reserve the top spot for him, or call these "The Tiger Woods Shout-Outs, brought to you by Nike."
Other Donnelly Columns:
August 31, 2000: Devil Rays Give Baseball A Black Eye
August 17, 2000: Too Much Tiger?
August 10, 2000: Ranting On Dennis Miller
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