Party’s Over: Turn Out the Knight

Did anyone see “The Great Santini�? It’s a film about a career military man and his relationship with his family and the world. He feels like everyone around him is soft, so he beats his wife, terrorizes his youngest son, throws a basketball in his oldest son’s face and ridicules him when he cries. In the end, he finally gags on his own bile, dies of a heart attack and everyone cheers.

Did anyone see the Bob Knight interview?

GARY DURRETT

Glendale

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The moron--his word--has proven once and for all that denial is not just a river in Egypt. It runs straight through Bloomington, Ind., only it’s far more foul and polluted than the original could ever be.

JIM MALLON

San Luis Obispo

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When Bob Knight said, “I have no idea what zero tolerance is,� Knight, himself, explained why he is now an ex-coach.

WAYNE MURAMATSU

Cerritos

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This whole Coach Knight situation is getting way out of hand. I find it sickening that you sports media people forced IU’s hand into firing the coach. You have turned it into a media circus spewing your ridiculous opinions around like shrapnel.

Bobby Knight is probably among the top 10 of all-time great coaches, but his quick fuse and hot temper have gotten him into trouble time and again. Maybe he is a tough interview, as Jeremy Schaap found out, but is that something to be condemned for? Why don’t you like him? Because he is too smart to fall into your idiot traps and answer your loaded questions? Instead you cut him off and call him a bully. He hates you people and I do too.

MIKE FITZPATRICK

Los Angeles

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Bobby Knight’s idea of authority was for everyone else to follow his rules. His idea of teaching was to mentally and physically abuse his athletes. If I hear one more time about his players graduating or his lack of cheating at Indiana, I think I’ll choke. Which reminds me . . . Oh well, you get the picture.

RALPH S. BRAX

Lancaster

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I don’t know if Mr. Plaschke was once an athlete or if he ever played any organized sports at a collegiate level, but his article on Bob Knight reflects his lack of insight and knowledge of coaching in college sports.

No matter how much Mr. Plaschke watches, studies or tries to explain it, he will never--ever--understand the player/coach dynamic. Like most sportswriters, Mr. Plaschke must try to glean the intricacies of what really goes on inside the huddle, in the locker room.And like most sportswriters, they have no clue of what it is like.

It’s sad that most Americans gain their knowledge of sports (especially coaching) from movies and television. It’s equally depressing to know that most sportswriters get paid to write about what they know so little about.

Mr. Plaschke is nothing more than a soccer mom with a byline.

PETER HRISKO

Los Angeles

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It was right that Bobby Knight was fired. But what is wrong with the situation regarding big-time athletics and universities is that people like Knight can exercise so much power and influence. Division I athletics is a blight on the academic landscape. Universities are about teaching and research, not about entertainment. Until university presidents have the courage to affirm the realities of what their universities are about, we can expect more examples of what we have witnessed in the Knight case over several years.

ALBERT W. JOHNSON

San Diego

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Bobby Knight never understood that respect is earned, not demanded. For 30 years Bobby Knight tarnished his brilliance with boorish behavior. Another Indiana man, John Wooden, quietly built his players’ character by example and won 10 NCAA championships in the process. Coach Wooden’s book, appropriately titled “They Call Me Coach,� reflects the earned respect and reverence that each of us feel for this very special man. Somehow I just can’t imagine any student at UCLA yelling, “Hey Wooden, what’s up?�

ROBERT S. PREECE

Dallas

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I was shocked to read the venom spewed toward Bob Knight by the West Lafayette--oops--I mean Los Angeles Times. What possible reason could there be for a paper that ignores all college hoops not played in Westwood to devote nearly half the sports section to validating the firing of Bob Knight?

I grew up in Indiana and I like Bob Knight. I don’t condone a great many of his actions, but I respect the record he has maintained while recruiting second-tier players. How many pro stars can you name that went to IU in the last 30 years? Is this because Knight whittled them down to nothing in college? No, most of them were nothing before they got there.

Top talent has not visited the IU campus for years, but why? Because today’s basketball talent is of the Westwood breed--baggy shorts, alley-oop passes, tattoos and jewelry--and wouldn’t know Xs and O’s if they were playing Tic-Tac-Toe. The children of “SportsCenter,� these boys, dreaming of Stuart Scott yelling “Boo-Yeah� as they dunk on national television. These kids are the same ones who don’t graduate and break NCAA rules--two things that were not tolerable under Knight’s leadership.

Is the end of the General’s run the end of abuse against athletes, the end of big-mouth, overbearing coaches? No, but it is the end of discipline, strategy and tradition. The future of college basketball is not Bob Knight benching a player who takes an ill-advised three. The future of college basketball is Steve Lavin rushing to halfcourt to encourage a maverick point guard after his third consecutive errant heave.

OLIVER LANG

Los Angeles

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Sports is supposed to teach good values. Bobby Knight’s supporters have demonstrated the worst in values: violence, threats and burning effigies.

This symptom may be the best reason of all to fire Knight, as he seems to have taught many by example that such behavior is OK.

SELBY JESSUP

Los Angeles

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Bobby Knight said, “I want to coach in the worst way.� I think he’s been wildly successful.

STEVE PARMELEE

Thousand Oaks

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Indiana’s administration brought upon itself the fallout from Bobby Knight’s termination by choosing to fire him over a minor transgression, if indeed he transgressed at all. They should have told Knight that his job required him attend every game, and then signed on for that Christmas tournament in Puerto Rico.

BART ROBERTSON

Torrance