NCAA: How long until Knight falls in Texas?

On any given afternoon, one can turn on the television and find Oprah talking to a seven year old who can recite Pi to seventy-four places while playing Mozart on the piano blindfolded and backwards. Fortunately, so as not to let the rest of us begin to feel insecurely inferior, the good folks at Texas Tech were good enough to show us all that the world still has its fair share of morons as well.

When president of Texas Tech University David Schmidly had current head men's basketball coach James Dickey run out of town to make room for the hiring of outcast coach Bobby Knight, he reaffirmed the validity of the frightening recent trend of firing successful and popular coaches without truly valid justification.

Dickey had become Tech's third winningest coach in just ten seasons, amassing 166 wins versus 124 losses. The seven time NABC District 7 coach of the year took his Red Raiders to an NIT appearance and twice to the Big Dance, including a run to the Sweet 16 and a school-record 30-2 season in 1996. After his first six season, Dickey had put together a stellar 119-58 record, and then things rapidly went south after the 1997 season when NCAA violations began to turn up. While it is not certain where in these violations existed, but their result were major losses in scholarships, including two lost this season. With a program in disarray, it is unfair to place the blame for the drop in production solely on the shoulders of the coach. Ironically enough, the sanctions will be lifted for the 2001-02 season, the first of the Bob Knight era.

Now while Dickey was no Denny Crum, he was still a strong and successful coach. He was popular with many of the players, had established recruiting networks (to which he could once again turn with next season being free of sanctions), and managed to keep Tech hanging around in a tough Big 12 Conference. Once Dickey had been swept away, Schmidly was quick to bring in Knight, signing the coach to a five year contract. He was equally quick in reassuring students, faculty, and the media that Knight would recieve the exact same treatment as any other employee of the university. A kinder, gentler Bob Knight proceeded to address the boisterous crowd, standing by his belief that he had done nothing wrong, and even went so far as to swear off profanity, a commitment I expect to last about as long as a Rick Majerus New Year's resolution to drop a few pounds.

Now while Knight's actions in the past will be debated ad naseum (you say "motivation," I say "assault"), one often overlooked fact remains: his Indiana teams were overrated underachievers, whose only appearances in the Top 25 came from the name of their coach and not performance on the court. In recent years, Bob Knight's Indiana squads have gone running from the NCAA Tournament as if they were dangerously allergic to the Sweet 16. His top recruits were beginning to defect to other schools, andeven his top assistants like Steve Alford (current Iowa head coach) bolted to escape the General. Make no mistake, I am not at all willing to excuse or overlook Knight's behavior, I simply think that what is at least as important here is the fact that his best days have come and gone. With Bobby Knight you get name recognition, media attention, and a fuller arena, but you also get a coach who has let the game pass him by because he was too stubborn to adapt with it. The more he runs himself out with an over-hyped team who self-distructs in the NCAA's (if they make it that far), the shorter the fuse on that time bomb gets. Tech fans, don't be fooled by the hype and the pageantry, because you are in for five long years filled with rants, raves, thrown chairs, abused players, and completely absent of Sweet 16 appearances.