KNIGHT- INDIANA RIFT REMAINS STRONG
Indiana wants to love Bob Knight. This state is just waiting for an excuse to forgive and forget and embrace the forever coach of Indiana University basketball.
But he’s not giving it. Perhaps he won’t ever give it. Possibly he’s not wired to do so, because an extension of even the smallest of olive branches requires humility and humanity that Knight hasn’t been willing to show. He is a private man, and he is a stubborn man, and he is an angry man. And so we wait. News broke last week that former Indiana player Todd Jadlow had written a book about his battle with and recovery from addiction. What should have been a triumphant story about the frailty and ultimate power of the human spirit was overshadowed, though, by an allegation that exploded like a canister of tear gas. Bob Knight physically abused me.
Did it happen? Jadlow says it did. Nobody who played with Jadlow, or who played on any of Knight’s 29 teams from 1971 to 2000, has verified Jadlow’s version of events or said Knight physically abused them as well.
The lack of corroboration does not mean Jadlow is lying. The cult of Knight remains strong, and his players have spent their adult lives fending off one outrageous incident after another, whether it’s Knight throwing a chair or grabbing Neil Reed by the throat or joking about rape or shoving an Indiana student who asked him, “What’s up, Knight?”
The cult of Knight is this strong: When Indiana fired Knight in 2000, his players sided with their coach, not the university that gave them their degree.
One player went so far as to say: “I’m sure not going to be wearing anything Indiana. For the first time in my life I’m ashamed to say that I’m a graduate of Indiana.”
The same guy said: “I, personally, don’t believe the two- faced administration. ... This is a guy ( Knight) who should have amonument of him erected.”
The player who said that back in 2000? Todd Jadlow.
The cult of Knight is powerful, but time has weakened its hold over the state. He has spent that time extending a middle finger to the university and, by extension, the Hoosiers fans who loved him unconditionally.
Knight first began to raise his hand in their direction when he snubbed his induction ceremony into the IU Hall of Fame in 2009, and higher it went in 2014 when he ignored A. J. Guyton’s public plea to attend Guyton’s induction into the IU hall. The finger was pointing skyward — You’re not No. 1 — in January when Knight didn’t return for the 40th anniversary celebration of his perfect 1976 national champion team. He didn’t respond to the invitation. Five weeks after that, Knight, 76, put to rest questions about his ability to travel when he returned to Indiana to appear at a fundraiser … for Purdue. By joking alongside Gene Keady and posing for pictures with Purdue fans at the Famous Purdue Agriculture Fish Fry at the state fairgrounds, Knight was raising that finger ever higher and slowly spinning toward all four corners of this state, making it clear to Milan, Evansville, Gary, Fort Wayne and everywhere in between what he thinks of your school.
But you’ll forgive that. You’ll forgive it all, even his most recent appearance with Donald Trump in Michigan, when he teased the crowd Monday by noting, “We beat your ass most every time we played you” — referring not to Indiana, but his alma mater Ohio State — if only he’d show a little affection for the school, players and fan base that launched his Hall of Fame coaching career. Just show IU, and IU fans, that they’re not dead to him. That’s all it would take. Return to campus one time. Let this fan base, this state, love him one last time.
Imagine that scene. Dan Dakich, who played and coached under Knight — and who has been critical of him on his radio talk show — says we’d hear “the loudest ovation in IU history, and maybe the loudest ovation there will ever be at IU.” Dakich prefaced that remark — the
loudest ovation in IU history — by saying “despite …” and then listing Knight’s most famous IU snubs: the Hall of Fame, the 40th anniversary, the Purdue function, the 25th anniversary of Knight’s 1987 national championship team.
“A lot of former players are like, ‘ What are you doing, ( Coach Knight)?’ ” Dakich says.
Knight has done so much damage to his reputation here and across the country that the interest in Jadlow’s allegations disappeared as fast as they arose.
We’re so done with Bob Knight, we don’t care enough even tomake sport of him. One of the most polarizing people in state history now generates apathy.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but at some point it will be too late. His hug awaits, if only he’d come back and claim it while he still can.