On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 93/166 |
David Mumpower |
I wish they had cast Terrell Owens instead of Martin Lawrence. Maybe he would have learned something. |
Bobby Knight is a household name. Sadly, his fame doesn't really come from the fact that as a head basketball coach, he's won more than 800 games, three NCAA national championships, nine Big Ten championships and four national coach of the year awards. It's not because he took the 1984 men's Olympic basketball team all the way to a gold medal. No, it's because he's prone to outrageous temper tantrums and bad behavior both on and off the court.
His first well-known incident dates back all the way to 1976, when Knight was criticized for pulling one of his players off the court by his jersey. A few years later, he was arrested (and convicted in absentia) in Puerto Rico for assaulting a police officer. Then, he fired a pistol at a press conference to startle a reporter.
He really emerged as the bad boy of basketball, though, when he through a chair across the floor during a loss to state rival Purdue. Knight received three technical fouls and was ejected from the game, of course. Next came an incident where he banged his fist on the scorer's table during the NCAA tournament, and raised all kinds of ire when he compared losing a basketball game to being raped in an interview with Connie Chung.
Knight wasn't through yet. He was called a racist for pretending to whip black player Calbert Cheaney. A year later, Knight pulled his son from a game and appeared to kick him in the leg. He was fined multiple times over the next couple of years, once for berating an NCAA volunteer at a news conference, and another for making derogatory remarks to referee Ted Valentine in a game against Illinois (to be fair, Valentine was god-awful as a referee during those years).
Knight was next accused of choking a man outside a Mexican restaurant, then caused controversy after getting in the face of a boss after a lost game. Then came accusations that he grabbed a player by the neck during a practice, that he ejected Indiana University President Myles Brand for talking during practice, and wiped himself with toilet tissue in front of players to make a point. Things got worse and worse from this point, and Knight was eventually fired.
Since then, he's seemed calmer at Texas Tech University, but little events have cropped up, including an altercation with a chancellor at a local salad bar.
Why, you wonder, do we tell you the saga of Bobby Knight? The reason is that Martin Lawrence will star in a movie about a coach who bears a great deal of similarity to the infamous coach. After a public meltdown at his university, Lawrence's character has little recourse other than taking a job as a coach of a losing junior varsity team. Like Adam Sandler, he must learn to manage his anger in order to keep order and contentment in his life. Theoretically, hilarity should ensue. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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