Learning a Little from Knight School

Just got finished with my second episode of ESPN's "Knight School," and while it's a fairly predictable reality show (aren't they all?), I find it at least marginally enjoyable. It is somewhat alarming to see how well Bob Knight, the hardass potential winningest college basketball coach of all time, understands the game and plays up to the camera crew. In a way, it is sort of like seeing your grandfather ham it up for a senior citizens' Survivor, something you'd never expect and probably never want to see.

As someone who tried, in the pipe dreams to end all pipe dreams, to walk on to a Division 1 basketball program and ended up playing for the so-called "Bobby Knight of small college basketball," I guess I'm predisposed to like this program as it combines those two experiences. I identify with the guys who are physically light years from ever playing D1 hoops, while indulging in jaw-dropping moments of deja vu with some of Bob's comments. (True story: My teammates and I used to read excerpts from A Season on the Brink and substitute our coach's name for Coach Knight and assign each of our players to one of the real life Hoosiers depicted in the book. The parallels were frightening.)

Anyway, on to the random thoughts about the show:

--I realize this is a show about walk-ons and the 15-minutes of fame and 15 days of unlimited campus celebrity a slot on the show could provide probably widened the applicant pool considerably, but where are the bodies? Being 5'9" is a marked disadvantage for a guy who's trying to walk-on for the Red Raiders, but if you weigh less than 150 lbs. you should find out immediately when intramural sign-ups start. I can't believe how small these guys are! Even the few head-toppers (as Shooter from Hoosiers would say) are in the 6'3", 195 lb. range. Is there not one person on the Texas Tech campus who was a solid 6'2", 200 and a pretty good high school hoops player who, for one reason or another, decided to forego the D3 offer and just go to school? Wouldn't this guy be the immediate frontrunner? At least I could foresee him holding his own in practice.

--While Bob kicking the ball into the stands seemed like a pathetically orchestrated event, I'll never get tired of him cleaning up his language for the Network. In the latest show, Bob said to the prospective Raiders, "You need to make a rectal deposit with tired." While "rectal deposit" is funny in its own right, I think that the phrase is even funnier unedited. If I had a dog, and that dog was begging me incessantly to go outside and make a rectal deposit, I'd probably kill myself laughing when I told him, "You need to take a shit with going outside." That's right, don't just get it out of your mind, get it out of your body entirely.

--"Slippage." I've only heard this word used in actual conversation by two people: my old college coach and Bob Knight. I'm beginning to think they're the same person.

--I love how stereotypical Knight's coaching staff looks. If a casting director were looking to fill the bench for "Glory Road 2," they could select any of the Red Raiders staff and give the make-up artist the day off because these guys are so stereotypically assistants that it's hard to believe they really are. T-shirts tucked into sweatpants, heavily gelled hair, the not quite fat but a few pounds past playing weight bellies, they're all there. The look of every assistant college basketball coach everywhere.

--And finally, the best part of the show in my opinion. Despite the fact that it is evident Knight realizes this is a reality show, his passion for the task at hand and for truly educating basketball players and trying to build a productive person are entirely real. His son Pat said in the last episode that Bob Knight is above all a teacher, and I actually believe that. I doubt that the real TT practices are run much differently than the ones run before the cameras, and that's a testament to the passion Bob brings to his profession. Eventhough he really has nothing at stake here, he's not mailing it in. While even the winner of this "contest" has little hope of ever contributing to the Texas Tech basketball team, I get the sense that Bob Knight feels it is his responsibility to impart as much knowledge to that guy as he would a bluechip prospect or even his own son or daughter.

In my mind, that's the definition of a coach.