Knight Falls

WHEN, in early September, Indiana University president Myles Brand fired basketball coach Bobby Knight, pundit reactions ran the gamut from Good riddance! to It’s about time! The Chicago Sun-Times wailed over “the shame he brought to Indiana University.” Geraldo Rivera insisted Knight had “robbed college ball of its last vestige of innocence.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was more sweeping: “Bobby Knight is gone because he despises every aspect of humanity save himself.”

The remorseless unanimity of the reaction had nothing to do with basketball. Knight may be the greatest college-basketball coach of all time. When he took the reins at Army at age 24, he became the youngest big-time hoops coach ever. Over 29 years at Indiana, he amassed three national championships, eleven Big Ten championships, and 763 victories; still in his 50s, Knight was closing in on North Carolina coach Dean Smith’s record of 879, at the rate of two dozen wins a year. Over the 1974-75 and 1975-76 seasons, his teams had a combined record of 63-1. He coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold in 1984.

About the Author

Christopher Caldwell

Mr. Caldwell is a contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books and the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

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WHEN, in early September, Indiana University president Myles Brand fired basketball coach Bobby Knight, pundit reactions ran the gamut from Good riddance! to It’s about time! The Chicago Sun-Times wailed over “the shame he brought to Indiana University.” Geraldo Rivera insisted Knight had “robbed college ball of its last vestige of innocence.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was more sweeping: “Bobby Knight is gone because he despises every aspect of humanity save himself.”

The remorseless unanimity of the reaction had nothing to do with basketball. Knight may be the greatest college-basketball coach of all time. When he took the reins at Army at age 24, he became the youngest big-time hoops coach ever. Over 29 years at Indiana, he amassed three national championships, eleven Big Ten championships, and 763 victories; still in his 50s, Knight was closing in on North Carolina coach Dean Smith’s record of 879, at the rate of two dozen wins a year. Over the 1974-75 and 1975-76 seasons, his teams had a combined record of 63-1. He coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold in 1984.