OT: 35 Year Anniversary of Bobby Knight Tossing The Chair
On February 23, 1985, exactly 35 years ago today, IU Coach Bobby Knight was "highly frustrated" with the referees during the Hoosiers game against Purdue in Assembly Hall. He expressed his extreme displeasure by ultimately tossing a plastic chair across the floor of the arena. One of my favorite clips of all time. Good story on it here:
https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/this-date-in-hoosier-history-bob-knight-throws-the-chair-2/
Love him or hate him - there will never be another Bobby Knight!
February 23rd, 2020 at 9:49 PM ^
Love him or hate him. He could put the officials in their place. . .
February 24th, 2020 at 7:16 AM ^
He could bully the officials into making unreasonable calls that went against the other team (possibly yours).
FTFY
February 24th, 2020 at 9:18 AM ^
You must be a big Mike Krzyzewski fan as well.
February 24th, 2020 at 11:02 AM ^
STFU with the "love him or hate him" shit... he's an ass
February 24th, 2020 at 3:20 PM ^
And we had to deal with a brutal whistle whenever we went to Bloomington.
February 23rd, 2020 at 9:50 PM ^
In the end we’re all human, and humans are inanely flawed.
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:17 PM ^
And some insanely flawed. Knight likely one of them.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:39 AM ^
And innately too—he was flawed in so many ways.
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:18 PM ^
The thing about Knight, though, wasn't just that he did crazy stuff like this in the heat of the moment, it was that he seemed singularly incapable of showing remorse afterward. Kind of like Woody Hayes.
February 24th, 2020 at 8:38 AM ^
That's a characteristic of a narcissistic psychopath.
February 24th, 2020 at 9:10 AM ^
Hayes actually did show some remorse after punching Charlie Bowman and did call to apologize to him. Of course it wasn’t enough to save his job, but still.
Knight, OTOH, never showed anything approaching even that level of basic decency and I’m convinced the fact he never let the Neil Reed incident go, and kept telling everyone what an awful player and kid Reed was for years afterwards, contributed to the stress and depression that caused him to drop dead from a heart attack at age 36.
Fuck Bob Knight.
February 24th, 2020 at 9:00 AM ^
Yet, somehow, most of us manage to go our entire adult lives without turning into a psychotic asshole who resorts to verbal or physical abuse every time something doesn’t go out way.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:40 PM ^
Sorry, but never retracting your open advice to relax and enjoy getting raped puts Bobby Knight in the Charles Manson - Joseph Stalin camp, not the Bo camp.
February 23rd, 2020 at 9:58 PM ^
Great basketball coach.
February 23rd, 2020 at 9:59 PM ^
I was in grad school at Purdue at the time. The next time Purdue and IU played after the chair throwing game was the following season. I had student tickets and the Purdue students started chanting "throw the chair Bobby, throw the chair" clap, clap, clap. It was glorious.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:33 AM ^
The same happened at Crisler when I was an undergrad... and in probably every other arena in which he showed up to coach the Hoosiers.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:00 PM ^
bad form. got no height on the chair, missed the target. weak attempt.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:30 PM ^
Poor pad level. Stiff bend off the edge.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:58 PM ^
still...could he play DT
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:44 PM ^
Methinks he knocked down all of the imaginary pins on the baseline.
If he had thrown two more, he could have had himself a Turkey.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:05 PM ^
Excellent save by the cheerleader. A former hockey player?
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:21 PM ^
A few referees should have been hit in the head with chairs at a 2016 football game.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:35 PM ^
He was a bully. Smart, charismatic, interesting, but something really off about the guy.
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:39 PM ^
Dude was a grade A dickhole.
February 24th, 2020 at 9:16 AM ^
And also shame on the sycophant college basketball announcers who would never call out Knight for what he really was. Dick Vitale was the worst of the lot with his “The General Robert Montgomery Knight” bullshit.
Mr. “I love the college game and the kids so much” was always ready with some excuse to justify why Knight wasn’t really a bad guy, even when he abused the shit out of his own players, and that he was just ‘misunderstood.’
February 24th, 2020 at 10:09 AM ^
I’m probably in the minority and will get negged to death, but I’m going to voice my opinion anyways. I really don’t get the hate towards Knight. Asshole sometimes, yes. But let’s look at some of the positives:
- Graduated 98% of the players that stayed all 4 years
- Made players attend class and would not let them take blowoff classes
- Did not engage in any sort of shady recruiting
- Had no problem in calling out shady programs / coaches which people fawned over that did cheat (UCLA under John Wooden)
- Won a shit-ton
- hated TV Ted and told off shitty refs
Bob was also good friends with Bo and admired Don Canham as well. Honestly, outside of the Puerto Rico assault I don’t see that much of a difference between Bo and Bob. Both of them had foot in the mouth moments and both were, let’s just say, to handsy with players. Neg away if you want.
February 24th, 2020 at 10:23 AM ^
Show me where Bo tried to choke one of his own players, lied about it, and then hounded the young man for years afterwards, telling anyone who would listen what a terrible player and person he was, and probably contributed to him dropping dead of a heart attack in his 30s
Knight is a POS and this whole “Well look at his accomplishments as a coach” is the sports equivalent of “At least Mussolini made the trains run on time.”
February 24th, 2020 at 10:29 AM ^
No coach should put their hands on players, period. Bo shouldn’t have. Bob knight shouldn’t have. I’m not excusing it for anyone. It’s a dick thing to do.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
No, it was beyond a dick thing to do. It’s not like he choked Reed in the heat of the moment and then later in said “I made a huge mistake I deeply regret and no one should blame Neil Reed for anything that happened.”
He repeatedly lied about it and told everyone that Reed was a liar and a malcontent, which a lot of people chose to believe BTW. Then, when it was exposed that Knight had actually choked Reed, he never showed any contrition or attempted to apologize. In fact he continued to peddle the narrative that Reed was a cancer and took any opportunity to blame him for getting fired from IU and belittle him as a player and a person until Reed’s dying day.
He fucking ruined that young man’s life out of pure spite and, if there was any justice in the world, Reed would have been the one welcomed back to Assembly Hall with open arms and Knight would he the one lying 6 feet under instead.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:10 PM ^
And Knight actually said that he wished death on the IU administrators for firing him - after he grabbed a random student who was trying to greet him, only months after his previous incident.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
Who knows if that's actually true about Knight making his players take real classes. Or if there was no academic fraud involved in getting all those guys to graduate. Our source for this is Knight himself and his IU sycophants.
What we actually know is that he continually acted like a jackass in the public eye and apparently was downright violent on multiple occasions. He has a literal arrest warrant out for him in Puerto Rico.
Not to mention:
-Saying that "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it"
-Taking a photo-op of himself whipping a black player
-Literally wishing death on the IU administrators who finally grew a spine and fired him after his millionth public embarrassment
But he did win a lot of games, so I guess that excuses it?
February 24th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
Yes, Knight acted like a jackass. I don’t think I’ve disputed that. My only point was this, and I know it’ll be taboo, but if Knight is a jackass for the things he did, aren’t a lot of the things Bo did jackassy as well? I mean, you can’t deny the fact Bo and Bob had a huge admiration for each other. As for me, I choose to celebrate both of them.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:49 PM ^
You're not really admitting it; you're rationalizing it by calling it "acting like a jackass." And for some reason you're trying to make Bo guilty by association.
I'm amazed that you "celebrate" a man who has committed assault multiple times (for which he should have spent time in jail), rationalized rape and was a massive asshole to basically everyone.
Really, think about what you're saying. Is winning that important to you?
February 24th, 2020 at 1:07 PM ^
You’re not getting my point at all. Nowhere did I say that Bob Knight should be where your moral compass is pointed. I’m simply saying the actual coaching things he did were first class, he often acted like a jackass and I don’t get entirely why people on this blog are freaking out about Knight while not realizing how similar he is to Bo.
I’ll ask this again since you didn’t answer. Knight was a jackass; didn’t Bo do plenty of jackassy things, too?
February 24th, 2020 at 2:49 PM ^
Did Bo have an arrest warrant for him for assaulting a cop? Did he choke one of his players?
How can you "celebrate" a man who does this? Knight should have not only been fired far earlier than he was, he should have stood trial for his criminal behavior.
February 24th, 2020 at 5:55 PM ^
I agree with you that those “He ran a clean program the right way” claims are dubious because it was always Knight and his lackeys that were always saying it.
February 24th, 2020 at 10:38 PM ^
He then went to Texas Tech and relied almost exclusively on junior college players and transfers. Call me skeptical that he did that in total compliance.
February 24th, 2020 at 12:55 PM ^
It's curious to me that you seem to think that assaulting your players (and a policeman!) is somehow a lesser offense than letting a booster give a player some cash.
February 24th, 2020 at 1:03 PM ^
When did I say that? Do you want me to list off some of the wonderful things Bo said and did?
February 24th, 2020 at 1:11 PM ^
You speak in this thread of celebrating a man who committed assault, apparently multiple times, because he won games and - supposedly - didn't commit NCAA violations. The implication seems to be that NCAA infractions are a red line, but trying a choke a guy is just some mistake, no biggie.
February 24th, 2020 at 1:13 PM ^
You do realize Bo assaulted his own players at practice too, right? No biggie, I’m sure.
February 24th, 2020 at 1:14 PM ^
And the masked poster behind 'Brian Greise' is..... DICK VITALE!
February 23rd, 2020 at 10:54 PM ^
Let's hope there's never another like him.
Dude knows the game from every angle and how to get results from his players, but he bullied his way through his career and his life. Being superbly capable at his profession doesn't (or shouldn't) exempt him from basic rules of human conduct.
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:02 PM ^
I can't believe I'm the first one to post the crystal ball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UoIaGkzLD0
"It says....what a shitty question!"
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:15 PM ^
Dude is and was an ass
But that shit will never get old
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:22 PM ^
Okay, I'll go with hate him.
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:23 PM ^
They just don't make 'em like that anymore, am I right fellow boomers?
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:25 PM ^
It was a bad season for IU that year. Meechigan had re-found their b-ball stride and was winning again. But why did Bobby through the chair...
At that time, Bobby was dating a former cheerleader who had graduated the year before. The student section knew this and started a chant: Peggy’s pregnant. Clearly, Bobby was not amused.
?
I was told that story by my aunt who worked with the Michigan team doctor; he was there.
February 23rd, 2020 at 11:52 PM ^
A miserable human...His behavior in Puerto Rico while representing USA basketball should have gotten him suspended from coaching...and then the bully choking of his own player...
"Believe it or not, I'm not happy that Indiana fired Coach Knight," Reed told ESPN at the time. "I don't have any feelings about it, mostly because I've had to stand alone for so long. In a way, I've been proven right, but that doesn't make my life any easier."
Reed transferred to Southern Mississippi shortly after the incident at Indiana and played there in the 1998-99 season. He told the magazine he "fell out of love" with basketball.
RIP Neil Reed