The press conference has just concluded, and Bob
Knight's job has been spared, with the expectation that he'll be held to a
Zero Tolerance policy, that he'll be suspended for three games, that he'll pay a
30,000 dollar fine and apologize to some people in particular, and to the rest
in general. He even has to be civil to the press. The President says that none
of the offenses - individually - are serious enough to terminate Knight.
With all due respect, he assaulted a player, he smashed a plant in an office,
he terrified a 64 year old secretary, he was insubordinate to his boss, and,
according to press stories, had previously choked his SID. He also was
accused of choking a man in a restaurant over the summer, more recently of
breaking his son's nose and injuring his shoulder. Videotape shows him
headbutting one player, several years ago, and kicking his other son while he
was on the bench. In Puerto Rico he slugged a cop. In another
incident he shoved an LSU fan in a garbage can. His treatment of the media
is ridiculous, and the fact that the media eggs him on is beside the point.
They lauded Knight for wanting to change his behavior, but if he's so big on
that, why did he wait until he was about to get canned to do so?
The reality is that Knight did the absolute minimum he needed to keep his
job, and the University is unwilling to hold him to the same standards they hold
the rest of their employees, which leads us to an interesting question: who has
been fired by the University in the last 20 years and for what? And if their
behavior isn't as outrageous as Knight's, we expect they'll have their
attorneys on the phone by the end of the afternoon. Indiana has established an
abysmally low threshold of acceptable behavior and it will be difficult for a
court to draw a distinction between what is allowed for the basketball coach and
what is allowed for the janitors. At Indiana, there has always been one
standard of behavior for Bob Knight, and one for everyone else, but for anyone
who has suffered at Knight's hand, or who has been dismissed for similar or
lesser cause, it can't be a very pleasant afternoon.