Tuesday, May 16
IU had painted itself into a corner
 
By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com

  Well, they sure threw the pamphlet at Bob Knight this time, didn't they?

Then again, what else was there for Indiana University president Myles Brand to do but give him one more chance ... or four ... or eleven, depending on the team's record, the importance of the person offended and how alumni solicitations are going.

At least (IU president Myles) Brand admitted that the school has 'a systemic problem' in regard to its basketball coach, an admission of galactic understatement.
A three-game suspension ... a $30,000 fine ... a stern warning along the lines of, "If you do something, and we catch you, and enough powerful people complain, we'll really be mad this time" ... that lone figure you see dancing and singing through the streets of Bloomington is R. Montgomery Knight.

Then again, people are creatures of habit, and a quarter-century of Knight having his run of the school is hard to break.

The fact is, based on IU's traditional record of zero lack of tolerance, Knight should not have been fired, at least not by the titans who sat behind the table Monday and tried to make this trimming of toenails seem like 100 lashes.

They and their predecessors let Knight roam the land unfettered by the strictures of other university employees. Had he been called in and reprimanded years ago, the first time he crossed the line that Brand and trustees president John Walda said he can cross no more, this shining example of administrative action never would have been necessary.

At least Brand admitted that the school has "a systemic problem" in regard to its basketball coach, an admission of galactic understatement.

The systemic problem remains, though, as shown by the fact that the men who judged him so generously were the same ones who committed extraordinary gymnastic poses over the years not to see what finally was tied around a rock and hurled through the administration building's bay window.

Had Knight been fired, they, too, would have had to go, for the simple reason that they changed the rules by which he was asked to perform at IU. He had been allowed to act as he has, and had been even before that first national championship in 1976. For these earnest-looking invertebrates to turn on him now would have looked like caving in to public pressure, which they have so successfully resisted on his behalf up to now.

Yes, Knight is a man of principle, and of principles. He has performed enough good deeds on behalf of those who could endure his darker side to make him a tragic figure of sorts. In some ways, he is almost Clintonian in that any discussion of his presidency must include the sentence, "Think of what he could have been if he hadn't ... "

Myles Brand
Myles Brand: "We cannot change the past, but we can shape the future."

And then you fill in the blank you choose.

Then again, Walda couldn't help but slip into a little Clinton himself when he responded to a question about the Neil Reed incident with this deathless bit of legerdespeak:

"It depends on what you mean by the word "choking,' " Walda said.

With this as one of the high points of Monday's press conference, it is almost impossible to imagine that Brand means what he says when he uses words like "zero tolerance," or "up to an including termination."

Oh, he did strike a properly outraged pose when those blood-thirsty media hyenas all but called him spineless to his face, but the plain truth is that he is not the man to throw out words like "zero tolerance," not when he and his fellow administrators essentially have told Knight that he can show zero tolerance to those who have offended him.

He understood that firing Knight meant reaping a whirlwind he could not reasonably withstand. By not firing him, Brand would only be scorned by those who already have done so. He couldn't win those people back, not after the miles of slack he had given Knight along the years.

He could, however, create a whole new group of enemies inside the school and the state, which would leave him with his immediate family, including the pets, as his entire constituency. Those of us who thought Knight could not withstand this plainly misunderstood the depth of the IU administration's fealty to its basketball coach.

Brand said at one point, as he was slapping on the last coat of whitewash, "We cannot change the past, but we can shape the future." He was trying to make the claim that Knight had to be forgiven for all the things he already did but would judged harshly for what he might do from here on. Nobody was buying who wasn't already predisposed to do so.

Then again, just as Knight has been acting in character all these years, so was Brand. One of Indiana's charms is its resistance to change for change's sake, especially change demanded by those who live outside the state.

Thus, for those of us who thought Knight finally had hit the wall, this proved an invaluable education. The firewalls remain intact, the emperor survives, and if he did not grow stronger as a result of this brush with ignominy, neither did he grow any weaker. Not when those given the task of disciplining him were the same ones who couldn't be bothered to do so when it might have done everyone some good.

Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
 


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Stats Class: Knight in the NCAA Tournament