Time For Fans To Get Over A Couple Of Things
January 22, 2020 at 3:53 a.m.
Time For Fans To Get Over A Couple Of Things
By Roger Grossman-
For some of you, today, that person is me.
I have something I need to tell some of you because you need to hear it. It doesn’t bring me any joy to tell you these things. I am not writing this hunched over my laptop with a sinister chuckle emitting from my lips.
In fact, it makes me sad to have to break this news to you.
Some of you are not going to think much of me afterward — I accept that. I already lost some of you on what must now be called The Great Pineapple on Pizza Debate, but let’s not go there again.
Indiana basketball fans, Bob Knight doesn’t feel the same way about you as you do about him.
Hoosier fans got sucked into a crimson vortex recently when Indiana was having a basketball reunion, and social media went completely bonkers because someone made a comment that led someone else to speculate that started an avalanche of sentiment that Bob Knight was going to attend.
Knight hasn’t attended any sort of IU-related function (other than a Hoosier baseball game) on campus since being terminated in September of 2000.
You and I can argue all day why he got fired, but in the final analysis his behavior became something the administration at the university could no longer ignore like had happened so often before.
Yep, he knew a lot about coaching basketball and he coached teams that won a lot of basketball games. However, basketball is played by people, and he didn’t know much about people in 1980, in 2000, or today.
He proved that over and over again in so many ways, and yet there is still a significant portion of Indiana basketball fans who still ache for Knight in the same way a scorned lover longs for their beloved to come back to them.
Folks, I hate to tell you, but Bob Knight doesn’t love you like you love him. As a matter of fact, he never loved you that way.
Bob Knight only loves Bob Knight. He took you for granted because he knew that no matter how he acted—tossing chairs, international arrests, choking players, belittling people who would not bow and kiss his ring — you would love him eternally and he had no reason to believe otherwise.
IU fans enabled Knight in every way, and in return he gave you … ambivalence, defiance and he got himself fired because he wouldn’t obey his superior’s direct instructions.
For that, IU fans made him a hero.
But, Bob Knight didn’t show up for the reunion. He didn’t send a message in his absence. He didn’t release a statement.
Not. A. Peep.
Most disappointing of all … U fans were surprised and disappointed.
The administrators who fired him are gone. Everyone associated with his termination is gone. But he was not coming back for that reunion.
He’s never coming back. Never, ever.
Famously, he quoted a poem at the end of a senior night celebration which ended in “I want them to bury me upside-down so my critics can kiss my (backside).”
He misspoke, because he should have said “everyone” could.
Why wouldn’t he come back? What keeps him away?
He doesn’t need to appear at IU in order to achieve his ultimate goal — which is simply that you IU fans keep talking about him as if he’s in a battle with the Holy Spirit for the third and final spot in the Trinity.
He wants you to talk about him. He wants you to fight for him. He wants you to fork over your hard-earned cash to sit and listen to him pontificate for a couple of hours. He wants you to continue writing him love letters with no intention of even reading them.
And, sadly, you still are.
He doesn’t love you. He never did.
Love those teams. Love those players. Long for those glorious days and nights, like I do.
But I beg you to stop pouring your love and affection into someone like Bob Knight, so sees you in such low regard that he doesn’t even want to come back to campus for one day for you.
It’s true — the person who gets broken up with really is the last to know.
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For some of you, today, that person is me.
I have something I need to tell some of you because you need to hear it. It doesn’t bring me any joy to tell you these things. I am not writing this hunched over my laptop with a sinister chuckle emitting from my lips.
In fact, it makes me sad to have to break this news to you.
Some of you are not going to think much of me afterward — I accept that. I already lost some of you on what must now be called The Great Pineapple on Pizza Debate, but let’s not go there again.
Indiana basketball fans, Bob Knight doesn’t feel the same way about you as you do about him.
Hoosier fans got sucked into a crimson vortex recently when Indiana was having a basketball reunion, and social media went completely bonkers because someone made a comment that led someone else to speculate that started an avalanche of sentiment that Bob Knight was going to attend.
Knight hasn’t attended any sort of IU-related function (other than a Hoosier baseball game) on campus since being terminated in September of 2000.
You and I can argue all day why he got fired, but in the final analysis his behavior became something the administration at the university could no longer ignore like had happened so often before.
Yep, he knew a lot about coaching basketball and he coached teams that won a lot of basketball games. However, basketball is played by people, and he didn’t know much about people in 1980, in 2000, or today.
He proved that over and over again in so many ways, and yet there is still a significant portion of Indiana basketball fans who still ache for Knight in the same way a scorned lover longs for their beloved to come back to them.
Folks, I hate to tell you, but Bob Knight doesn’t love you like you love him. As a matter of fact, he never loved you that way.
Bob Knight only loves Bob Knight. He took you for granted because he knew that no matter how he acted—tossing chairs, international arrests, choking players, belittling people who would not bow and kiss his ring — you would love him eternally and he had no reason to believe otherwise.
IU fans enabled Knight in every way, and in return he gave you … ambivalence, defiance and he got himself fired because he wouldn’t obey his superior’s direct instructions.
For that, IU fans made him a hero.
But, Bob Knight didn’t show up for the reunion. He didn’t send a message in his absence. He didn’t release a statement.
Not. A. Peep.
Most disappointing of all … U fans were surprised and disappointed.
The administrators who fired him are gone. Everyone associated with his termination is gone. But he was not coming back for that reunion.
He’s never coming back. Never, ever.
Famously, he quoted a poem at the end of a senior night celebration which ended in “I want them to bury me upside-down so my critics can kiss my (backside).”
He misspoke, because he should have said “everyone” could.
Why wouldn’t he come back? What keeps him away?
He doesn’t need to appear at IU in order to achieve his ultimate goal — which is simply that you IU fans keep talking about him as if he’s in a battle with the Holy Spirit for the third and final spot in the Trinity.
He wants you to talk about him. He wants you to fight for him. He wants you to fork over your hard-earned cash to sit and listen to him pontificate for a couple of hours. He wants you to continue writing him love letters with no intention of even reading them.
And, sadly, you still are.
He doesn’t love you. He never did.
Love those teams. Love those players. Long for those glorious days and nights, like I do.
But I beg you to stop pouring your love and affection into someone like Bob Knight, so sees you in such low regard that he doesn’t even want to come back to campus for one day for you.
It’s true — the person who gets broken up with really is the last to know.
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