Goodbye Bobby - Bobby Knight Retires

When I saw the blurb last night about Bobby Knight's immediate retirement, like many sports fans, my first thought was "what happened now". With a career that has always been clouded in a bit of controversy over his temper and coaching style, I suppose that thought was inevitable. Maybe it shouldn't be.

I've never been a Knight detractor. Truth be told, I haven't really cared. Around Tobacco Road, Bobby Knight is the firey coach who bested Dean Smith's win record and once had an assistant on his staff named Krzyzewski (you can call him Coach K). If anything, I think the criticism of Coach Knight was mostly unfair. My high school football coach didn't just throw chairs and yell obscenities... I also saw him pick a kid up and hold him against a brick wall one time. And we were in high school. Maybe basketball players are different, but if we could take that in high school, then I don't see why the over-sensitive PC-police went after Coach Knight for less. Sure he expected a lot from his players, sure he let them know when he was displeased and they weren't giving their all. Should we expect anything less? Coach Knight also reportedly considered it his duty to mold boys into men and would do anything for them later in life. Yet that part of the story is often untold.

But it doesn't matter. Even though I dismissed much of the Knight criticism over the years I obviously hadn't forgotten, because I still thought he must have done something if he was retiring now. But from initial reports, things couldn't be further from the truth. Coach Knight always did things his way, controversy and criticism be damned. Apparently he wants to retire the same was he coached, on his own terms. After thinking about it over the weekend and discussing it with his wife, Bobby Knight retired Monday, effective immediately, and left the reigns to his son Pat. Virtually no other coach would leave like that, but then no other coach is Bobby Knight. The winingest coach in Division I men's college basketball retired, in the process securing a head coaching position for his son and continuing the mystic and controversy around his career. And when you think about that career in total, it couldn't have been done in a more perfect way.

Congratulations on a great career Coach Knight.