Hardly a Knight in shining armour

They have been up in arms on the Bloomington campus of the University of Indiana this week. United in an angry fervour, thousands of Indiana students university president Myles Brand had imposed when he let Knight keep his job back in May.

Some of the protestors carried signs demanding Brand also be sent packing. And a not insignificant number of them distributed flyers showing a picture of Kent Harvey, bearing the frightening message "WANTED: DEAD". Harvey is the 19-year-old Indiana freshman whose encounter with Knight last week triggered the angry confrontation which led to the sacking.

In what was apparently a chance meeting, Harvey was with some friends when he spotted the basketball coach and greeted him with a salutation of "What's up, Knight?"

Knight, as is his wont, positively exploded. According to witnesses, he seized the teenager by the arm roughly and cursed him as he reminded him of the proper way to address one's elders, demanding that he be called either "Mister Knight" or "Coach Knight".

There is an unfortunate, if coincidental, aspect to all of this. Harvey's stepfather is Mark Shaw, a former Bloomington radio talk-show host who had been vocally critical of Knight in the past, a circumstance which has given some credence to the whispers that Knight's downfall was triggered by an agent provocateur.

The fact remains that Harvey succeeded where others, ranging from the government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the commissioner of the "Big Ten" to basketball referees, his own abused players, and a whole host of university administrations, had failed.

As always, Knight remained unrepentant. He orchestrated a news conference, where he produced a chalkboard and demonstrated his version of L'Affair Harvey. Openly disdainful of journalists, Knight's usual response to questions he finds distasteful is to berate the inquisitor. His imperious, belligerent, and bullying non-answers often suggest "I'd answer that, but since you mere mortals are obviously too stupid to understand what I would say anyway, I won't bother". Even while openly disdainful of the press, Knight has managed to coddle a carefully-chosen group of acolytes among the sportswriting fraternity. Suffice it to say this small band of loyalists has taken Knight's firing even harder than he did.

Be that as it may, consider the following excerpts from the rap sheet of this alleged moulder of men. In a 1975 game he grabbed one of his players, sophomore Jim Wiseman, by the jersey and flung him into his seat.

In 1979 he was charged with hitting a Puerto Rican policeman guarding one of his practice sessions at the Pan American Games, where Knight was coaching the US entry. (He was tried in absentia and sentenced to six months in jail, but successfully resisted attempts to have him extradited back to Puerto Rico).

In 1984 he threw a chair across the court during a game against Purdue in protest at an official's call.

In 1987, after being ejected for arguing with an official's call, he pulled his team off the court in an exhibition game against the Soviet Union and refused to allow the game to continue.

In 1988, during a television interview with NBC's Connie Chung, he provided his now-infamous advice to women: "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."

In a 1991 practice session for an NCAA tournament game, he produced a bullwhip and gave a mock "whipping" to a black player, an incident many perceived to have racial overtones.

During a 1993 game against Notre Dame he screamed at one of his players (who happened to be his own son, Pat Knight) and, in full view of the crowd, kicked his son in the leg.

During a time-out in a 1994 game against Michigan State he head-butted freshman Sherron Williams.

Last year, he was investigated after a man filed battery charges, claiming Knight had choked him in the car-park of a Bloomington restaurant after he had confronted the coach for making a racist remark.

Earlier this year a report surfaced that Knight had choked one of his former players, Neil Reed, during a 1997 practice session. Knight typically denied the charge, but CNN produced a videotape confirming that the episode had in fact occurred. A university investigation unearthed a number of similar confrontations, and a secretary for the IU athletic department came forth to describe an incident in which the basketball coach had hurled a vase across the room at her.

Remarkably, the university allowed him to keep his job. In May he was fined $30,000, suspended for three games, and placed under a "zero-tolerance" behaviour policy.

Knight is being downright silly when he blames the university for the vagueness of its order. He claimed this week no one had ever adequately explained to him what a "zero-tolerance" conduct policy was supposed to mean.

I can help him with that one. It means just what it says: zero tolerance.

Unsurprisingly, Knight has responded by seizing the initiative. He leapt at the chance to appear on a one-on-one interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap this week, and then spent most of the session attempting to bully the interviewer.

"You've got a long way to go to be as good as your dad. You better keep that in mind," he admonished Schaap, whose father is the famed writer and broadcaster Dick Schaap.

And his version of the Harvey incident was classic Knight. "I think that's something that I would probably do under the same circumstances tomorrow and the next day and the day after that," the deposed coach told Schaap. "What I did with that student was simply try to teach him something about manners. All I said was, `Son, I'm not Knight - I'm Coach Knight or Mr. Knight'." Which still doesn't explain why Harvey, according to the police, had marks on his arm. Or why his family are still in hiding today?