With the passing of Bobby Knight, the question of his legacy as either monster or master has played out on the Internet and various media outlets. I have no interest in litigating this on this blog. I have my own opinions on the matter, which doesn’t need to be hashed out with others. My connection to Indiana University and its basketball program isn’t a subject for debate.
While it is common knowledge that I lived in Bloomington in September 2000, the mostly untold part of the story is that I was near the center of the storm.
This goes back to the 1999-2000 season. Indiana started off the season unranked and started their season, ironically, at Texas Tech, where Knight would eventually end up finishing his coaching career. The Hoosiers started off 6-0 after beating rivals Notre Dame and Kentucky before inexplicably losing to Indiana State at home during the Indiana Classic. Indiana would go on to lose tough road games to Michigan State and Purdue but still maintain a 17-3 record and a top 10 ranking. Then Indiana would lose six of the last nine games of the year, including a 20-point loss to Pepperdine in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Buffalo.
Right before the Pepperdine game, CNNSI ran a report dealing with Bob Knight’s abusive treatment of players, more specifically, Neil Reed. Reed had claimed that Knight had choked him during a practice two years previous. Knight would loudly deny the allegations. About a month later, a grainy video was released showing Knight violently placing his hands on Reed.
Was he choking Reed? It’s honestly hard for me to say one way or the other. Knight grabs Reed with one hand on either his throat or his shoulder. However, how Reed’s head snaps back suggests that Knight could have choked him. Either way, what happened was not okay. It was still enough for Indiana President Myles Brand to place Knight on a “Zero Tolerance” policy. It became apparent that Knight was basically already fired, we just had to wait for it to happen.
While Knight’s supporters in Bloomington took a number to defend Indiana’s coach publicly, one man stood alone. Mark Shaw was the afternoon host for our AM radio station, WGCL. Shaw became a national name in the early ‘90s. As one of the few people with a background in broadcasting and a law degree in Indianapolis, ESPN hired Shaw as their legal correspondent during the Mike Tyson trial. Shaw would also write several books.
I liked Mark Shaw. We never worked together directly, but he knew who I was and was always quite nice to me. He was kind enough to sign a copy of his book, Larry Legend, the story of Larry Bird, for my mother. She was a huge Bird fan and loved the book.
As the lone voice in the woods, Shaw would proclaim on his program that Knight was an embarrassing Indiana and Brand’s new policy didn’t go far enough. Shaw would beseech the University daily to fire Knight and be done with it, restoring Indiana University as a beacon of higher education and not being known as the basketball school. I’m pretty sure part of Shaw enjoyed jousting with callers who would recite Knight’s accomplishments and educational street cred.
That summer, Shaw had left WGCL. There was a new writing project he was taking on, and arguing about Bob Knight for two hours a day was getting in the way of his number one priority. The new show that replaced it, The Afternoon Edition, needed some extra help, allowing me to work with a call-in talk show.
Then came the events of Thursday, September 7, 2000. Knight arrived at Assembly Hall and passed a group of students standing in line to get tickets for the Indiana/North Carolina State game that Saturday. Kent Harvey, a 19-year-old freshman, called out to Indiana’s coach, “Hey, Knight! What’s Up!” Unable to fight his inner demons, Knight turned back to the student to have his “They call me Mister Tibbs” moment.
“Son, my name isn’t Knight to you, it’s coach Knight or it’s Mr. Knight. I don’t call people by their last name and neither should you.” Knight thought it was his opportunity to teach this brash whippersnapper some manners and common courtesy. Harvey claimed that Knight grabbed his arm, an allegation the embattled coach denied.
While people started to know the name Kent Harvey, there was some familial connective tissue that people outside of Bloomington didn’t know. Kent Harvey was the stepson of Mark Shaw. By the time I arrived at work at 2:00 that afternoon, people had flooded the phones at WTTS/WGCL with phone calls, complaining about the former host and blaming the program director, the new afternoon hosts, and anyone connected to the station in a mass conspiracy to bring down a great coach, one who hadn’t advanced to the Sweet 16 in the previous five seasons.
Word had circulated that Knight would be fired during the weekend for violating the new policy. Students were planning protests at various parts of the campus. I was working on the air at WTTS that Sunday, when the new Afternoon Edition team met in the office to plot out our coverage if Brand would actually go through with firing a campus icon.
Our program director plotted out logistics. He told one of the show’s audio engineers, “Take the station van over to Showalter Fountain and talk to some students.”
“Okay,” I said. “But before we go there, we should take the van to the decal detailer to have the logo turned upside down.”
The PD looked confused. “Why would we do that?”
“Because when the students overturn the van and set it on fire, we’ll be able to see the logo on SportsCenter.”
It took the PD a second to get my meaning. “Oh, right! Shaw.” The PD looked at our engineer. “Do you mind taking your own car.”
“Sure!”
The Wednesday after Knight was fired, the university allowed its most decorated coach to give a farewell address to the students in Dunn Meadow on the campus. We broadcast his speech live. Our other engineer in the field gave us the feed, which left me in the studio to operate the board—the most nerve-racking half-hour of my career. I hovered over the live button, gambling a potential FCC fine against my reaction time to cut the feed in time if an unencumbered Knight would exercise his colorful language on our air.
Ian Shane is the author of In Ten Years, Postgraduate and Radio Radio and creator of the blog, Liner Notes. His “almost memoir,” Sundry Notes of Music, is now available in paperback and Kindle. He currently lives in Denver with his cats.