Glass Houses–A Momentary Lapse of Reason
12-18-09
Glass Houses
Great album, by the way…
Makes for a super holiday gift
A very interesting article today in the Indianapolis Star from Terry Hutchens covered former Indiana head coach Bob Knight’s speaking engagement for the Indiana High School Basketball Hall of Fame last night in Indianapolis.
Coach is entitled to his opinion, and he has many, but one “fact” jumped off the page at me this morning while reading the article.
See if you can find it.
It’s on the first page and is a direct quote from Coach Knight.
One more minute.
Okay, you had your chance.
Why does this matter?
Coach says in his speech that three people told him he needed to go somewhere else, and one of these people was the former Alabama football coaching legend.
Paul “Bear” Bryant died January 26, 1983.
While I am not disputing ANYTHING Bob Knight says, I found this interesting in two ways:
One, was Coach unhappy as far back as 1982, one year off a National Championship? What was going on in those days that would have upset him?
Two, would he have left one year before coaching the United States Olympic team to a possible gold medal, completing his career Grand Slam (NIT, NCAA, Pan-Am games)? Don’t forget Alford was coming just a season later as well…
Heck, 1987 would have never happened. Same for 1992. That’s another National Championship and Final Four appearance.
That’s a big chunk of IU basketball history that would currently be missing if this were the case. And that’s a long time to be in the same job under people you don’t particularly care for and who are your bosses.
We all have read and heard the stories from the mid to late 90′s that things weren’t always great with Coach and the administration.
But, is the mentioning of Bear Bryant just a momentary lapse of reason, a name dropping exercise or did the problems go back and extra 12 or so years and continue to fester from there?
Interesting or confusing, or both?
You decide
I would attribute it to lapse of memory. I didn’t catch that when I read the article. What I thought you were refering to was when he said; Those of you who WERE fans………like surely when I left all of the fans left too.
If he did speak with Bear, and I am not implying that he didn’t, I just find it interesting that “issues” were festering even back then. It paints the picture that even in the best of times he was not “happy”, “satisfied”, etc. A very complicated individual, no doubt.