Lack of humility haunts Knight, Belichick
MILWAUKEE — One of the things I intended to write about at the Super Bowl was Bill Belichick's poor behavior. It's just as well I'm just getting around to it because it segues nicely into Bobby Knight's abrupt retirement.
One second was left on the clock in the best Super Bowl ever when Belichick arrogantly decided the game was over. He was sprinting to the locker room while being reminded by a pursuing New England PR guy and an official that the clock had stopped on the Patriots' final play and the rules require a full 60 minutes, not 59 minutes 59 seconds.
Apparently, the game is over when Bill Belichick decides it's over. His arrogance led to a moment of chaos on the field that took just a little away from the New York Giants' stunning upset. No doubt Belichick was humiliated that his genius had been subverted by his own mistakes, but that's no way to behave. Apparently, the Cleveland experience taught him no humility.
Which brings us to the abrupt retirement of Knight, who won more men's college basketball games than anyone.
I've always been ambivalent about Knight. He played by the rules and graduated players, which would put him in a near-exclusive class in big-time college sports. For that, he is praiseworthy. Otherwise, he was an arrogant bully who treated horribly those he believed were beneath him, and history should remember him for that as well.
For anyone perplexed by Knight's duality, there was always this litmus test: Would you allow your son to play for him?
I wouldn't, because there were coaches who were just as smart, just as demanding, just as exacting and almost as successful as Knight. Their players graduated and went on to be just as successful in life as the courageous young men who ran the character-building, yet abusive Knight gauntlet.
Dick Bennett, for example. I would've wanted a son to play for Dick Bennett. Anyone who knew Bennett realized he could blow his top just as violently as Knight. Bennett was every bit as insightful as Knight and as much the perfectionist, which is why Bennett would become so incensed when a 19-year-old kid could not see the same things on a basketball court that were so apparent to his brilliant mind.
But here's the difference: Bennett could control himself where Knight could not, because of Bennett's humanity, because of his humility. Despite his achievements in Wisconsin, Bennett treated everyone around him with dignity and respect.In 1994, Bennett coached University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to one of the greatest upsets in tournament history by beating the Jason Kidd-Lamond Murray California team. The NCAA stuck the Phoenix in what amounted to a truck stop in Ogden, Utah. When asked about it, Bennett said he was thankful for the accommodations.The lingering memory of Knight on an NCAA podium is severely browbeating some poor volunteer who had made a minor mistake.But the problem in sports, as with society at large, is the absence of humility starting at the top and its troubling influence. Just as Belichick's cheating and arrogance won't be missed when he's gone, Knight's abusiveness has made for a joyful departure, even if he was clean.
