Hard days for Knight, the coach from hell

Accusations of violence threaten the future of college basketball guru

Nobody has ever disputed Bob Knight's success as a college basketball coach. He has racked up three national championships during his career at Indiana University, but it is more than the statistics: in a state where basketball is everything, Knight is king, a man regarded with reverence and respect.

But his methods; now, that's another thing. Revelations about Knight's aggression, assaults and violence have steadily grown from a trickle to a flood over the past few years, culminating in what looks like an impossible situation. Three decades of Hoosier hoops and harassment, of silverware and strangleholds, may come to an end this weekend.

Like Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, Coach Bob is a legend. But, as with Kurtz, it has long been clear that Knight's methods are unsound. He may not have lopped off heads and stuck them on stakes, but he was clearly getting there.

Knight is a great believer in the idea that if you get them by the balls, then their hearts and minds will follow. "This is absolute bullshit," he said in one typical conversation with his team, from which a string of expletives have been deleted. "Now I'll run your ass right into the ground. I mean I'll run you, you'll think last night was a picnic. I had to sit around for a year with an 8-10 record in this league and I mean you will not put me in that position again, or you will god damn pay for it like you can't believe... "

But it went further than that: allegations have repeatedly surfaced of his violence towards players, assistants, secretaries and just about anyone who happened to be in the wrong place. He was charged with assaulting a policeman in Puerto Rico while a coach at the 1979 Pan-American Games; he served a one-game suspension in 1993 for kicking his son Patrick during a time-out; he hurled chairs.

Now, an avalanche of even worse allegations have come to light. A former player, Neil Reed, said Knight tried to strangle him in practice. He attacked a subordinate, and threw a glass vase at a colleague. An investigation is under way into his conduct, and leaks last week suggested he might be asked to resign.

Knight has been nearly untouchable. "There's been one set of rules for everyone in this university and another set for Bob Knight," said Murray Sperber, an English professor and Knight's most vocal critic in IU.

Even now, the university's trustees will only discuss him behind closed doors or in anonymous leaks to the press: you would think they were conducting the Hitler bomb plot rather than the dismissal of a coach.

But then, as his defenders make clear, Knight is not a coach; he is the coach. "Coach Knight is not an average figure," said Todd Starowitz, a spokesman for the team. "Let's compare an Olympic title to yelling at a secretary. Let's compare a 98 per-cent graduation rate to getting after a reporter. Or raising millions of dollars directly or indirectly for this university and touching a player. These things all have to be considered."

Knight is fishing in the Bahamas, and is due to spend 10 days in Scotland next month. But he defended himself in an interview with the St Petersburg Times of Florida: "Bob Verdi of the Chicago Tribune took your entire sports-writing profession to task. Calling his counterparts 'The Perfect People'. Explaining the methods a coach might use; stuff that can be entirely misunderstood by many people not used to the highly competitive world of athletics."

He admitted, though, that he is uncertain about whether to continue. "At the end of every season since I've been here, I've always said I assumed I would be back the following year," he said. "No different this time. But, yes, there is... stuff."

It is true that things do go on behind closed doors in sports teams and until now Knight's record has ensured few questions have been asked.

"Funny, but we can only guess how this furor might have been reshaped if the Hoosiers, instead of getting bounced by Pepperdine in the NCAA Tournament's opening round, had become this year's national champions," said the St Petersburg Times. "Don't say it's not a factor."