He was the cornerstone of a program that reinstated a tradition of basketball in the midwest.  He’s had book written about him.  His character has been the topic of portrayals on the silver screen.

Former college basketball coach Bobby Knight compiled a 662 wins (against 239 defeats) including three national championships while he was at the University of Indiana.  He coached their for almost three decades, and was the heart and soul of the program.  Because of his unparalleled success there, Knight will be inducted into the Indiana Athletics Hall of Fame later this year.

The performance of his teams speaks volumes.  In addition to his great winning percentage, he was a 4-time national Coach of the Year and also led Indiana to a perfect season in 1976 (a feat which has gone unmatched up to this point).

But the unrivaled truth is that we are all familiar with Bobby Knight for another reason.  Bobby has always been a man fueled by his emotions.  And he has never been one who has been able to exhibit any sense of control of those emotions.

A typical Bobby Knight mugshot.

Knight demanded nothing short of perfection from his players.  He stressed fundamentals, mental preparation and top-notch execution.  But for all of the tough love that he gave his players over his decades of dominance, Knight needed the be the recipient of some even tougher love.  No university should have put up with the culmination of incidents that Knight was guilty of.  Having him last in a head coaching position for as long as he did was simply astonishing.  And as the years passed by, so did his ability to run an unchallenged dictatorship.  And the rest was history.

Nowadays, more than ever, committees are having to make decisions on whether to induct people into group that represent the upper echelon of their discipline (examples: admitting gamblers/steroid users/criminals into the Hall of Fame).  The end decision is normally to carefully emphasize the individual’s performance and to put everything else aside.

But aren’t individuals worth more than what they can produce on a field?  How much longer can we be hypocritical in our judgement of what is acceptable and what is not?  Long before the T.O.’s and the Kobe Bryant’s of the world, it seems that Bobby Knight was busy blazing a trail of eccentricity that likes of which had not been seen before.      

Let’s just remember that come November 6.  And don’t be surprised if he finds a reason to toss a chair at somebody.