A lot has been written about Bob Knight since his death and it’s not surprising that many of them seem so widely different. Where you stood on him and with him mostly depends on whether you were a friend, a former teammate, one of his former players, a fan (of Indiana or an opponent) or a member of the news media, who either supported or criticized him.
That’s why recollections of him summons such a wide range of opinions. If he didn’t like or care about you, he could be an arrogant, aggressive, offensive SOB. If he did, he could be an engaging, funny and loyal friend. If those descriptions seem like two completely different people, you now understand why the views of him are often are sometimes in such radical conflict.
The Knight I knew was brilliant, funny, arrogant and insufferable. I saw both sides because I got to know him through Dick Otte, my boss and mentor at the Columbus Dispatch, who was one of Knight’s good friends. Otte had covered Ohio State basketball at the Dispatch during the Knight era at OSU and said he had talked Knight out of quitting the team a couple of times.
Otte liked Knight a lot, but he wasn’t oblivious to his faults. He knew how endearing he could to his friends and what a miserable jerk he could be those he didn’t know or respect. He said that one of his problems was that he was spoiled and was used to getting his way.
When Knight came to town, he usually called Otte and sometimes went out with him. When Otte went to Indiana, he often visited Knight. I got to know Knight pretty well because of Otte, but most of the time that meant being the target of Knight barbs at his (occasional) press conferences. (“I see they still don’t have a height requirement for sportswriters in Ohio.” It didn’t help me get information from him when I needed it.
“Knight said if you call him, he will talk to you,” Otte once told me, as I prepared to write an advance on the upcoming OSU-IU game. At the time, I was on the OSU basketball beat and Knight wasn’t talking to reporters.
So, I called him, got his secretary and told her who was calling. She put me on hold, then got back on the phone.
“Coach Knight isn’t in, but there’s a note on his desk that says if anyone from the Dispatch calls, tell his good friend Dick Otte he said ‘Hello,’” she said.
I knew he was sitting there in his office, chucking over his little joke. The next time they played Indiana, Otte again told me to call him and I declined.
A few years later, I was surprised to get a chance to turn it around on him. There was a play at the end of an OSU-Indiana game in Bloomington that resulted in a controversial foul. Knight charged off the bench and said something to the OSU player who had committed the foul, and after the game that player was asked what Knight had said to him.
After a brief pause, the OSU player said “He cussed me out. Yeah, he cussed me out.” The way the player said it, it sounded like he may have been making it up, but it wasn’t my place as a beat reporter to make that judgement. I quoted the player in my story, and because Knight was already in trouble with the Big Ten for throwing a chair or something, it put him in a bad spot.
The next day he sent an IU assistant on a plane to Columbus with a video so Channel 4 announcer Jimmy Crum (who had also covered him during his OSU days) and I could watch it, supposedly to prove that the foul was flagrant and Knight hadn’t actually cussed at the offending Buckeye. This was the days before the Internet, so I watched it with Crum at the TV station.
When I returned to the newspaper office, it wasn’t more than 30 minutes before I received a call from Indiana. “Hi Bob, this is so and so, Coach Knight’s secretary. Hold for Coach Knight.” A few seconds later, the line clicked and Knight’s sweet voice was on the other end: “Hunter?”
“Bob Hunter isn’t her right now, but there is a note on his desk that says if anybody from Indiana calls, tell them to tell his good friend Dick Otte he said ‘Hello.’
There was long pause. “Damn, Hunter. You’ve got a good memory.”
The video was inconclusive, which he must have known, but I guess he had made some kind of point by willing to have two Columbus reporters watch it. As near as I can remember, the Big Ten looked the other way.
Another time he invited most of the visiting Columbus news media in town for an IU football game to attend one of the Hoosiers’ basketball practices. This was another time when he wasn’t getting along with the Indiana reporters – he had stopped doing post-game interviews and instead had his PR department hand out a mimeographed sheet with a few useless quotes from him about the game.
I wasn’t sure why he invited us there unless it was because there were still quite a few reporters from his playing days in the Columbus media and he wanted to make a point to Hoosier reporters. And then again, he may have simply been a way for him to crack a joke.
When the practice ended, we started to get up and leave and an Indiana manager told us to wait, that Coach Knight had something for us. We waited and a couple of minutes later, another manager showed up with a stack of mimeographed sheets and started handing them out to each of us.
It read:
SOME POST-PRACTICE QUOTES FROM INDIANA COACH BOB KNIGHT:
“F— the press.
My favorite Knight story occurred on a day when I was working in the office in late September with Otte, who told me that he was going to have lunch with Knight at Plank’s Bier Garden in German Village and asked if I wanted to come along. I did, of course, but I had no idea where it would lead.
When we had finished lunch, Knight said ‘You know, I’d like to go up and see the old man,” the “old man” in question being OSU football coach Woody Hayes. Otte said OK to that, and then asked me if I wanted to go along or if I had work to do in the office. Knight and Hayes together? No way I was going to miss that.
So we went up to the old North Facility, which has grown into the Woody Hayes Athletic Center today, and marched down the corridor to Hayes’ humble office. Otte knocked on the door and Woody answered, rubbing his eyes because he had been taking an early afternoon nap. It didn’t matter; he was pleased as he could be to see that Knight had come for a visit.
The three of filed into the little office and had probably a half-hour visit. The football team had practice later that afternoon, but Woody wasn’t concerned about that now. He and Knight were talking about all kinds of things and I was sitting there thinking that even though I was only 25 or 26, this was one of those days I would probably never forget.
It was getting late and Hayes was deep into a long story about the cracking of the German code during World War II. I didn’t have any idea where it was going or why Woody was telling us this, but finally he abruptly stopped and said something like “And you know who the brother-in-law of the guy who cracked the German code was?”
Of course, we all shook our heads. Woody beamed and said something like “Harry Smith!”
We all expressed wonderment at this, but I remember thinking that I was a history minor in college and has read countless books of history and I had no idea who this guy was or why Woody had told the story. It seemed like the most obscure tidbit of info I had ever heard, and to this day, it still seems that way; that’s why I can’t remember the precise wording of the question or the name that Woody spit out in amazement.
At any rate, the story and our reaction pleased Woody and we all bid him farewell so he could prepare for football practice. After the door closed behind us and we had taken three or four steps down the hall, Knight grinned and looked over at us.
“I knew the answer but I didn’t want to disappoint the old bastard.”
