On this day 25 years ago, I was on my way to the Sydney Olympics. I had just taken a job with the Indianapolis Star that July, and now I was jetting from Indy to Los Angeles, where I'd have a six-, maybe seven-hour layover before moving on to Sydney, Australia.
Meanwhile in Bloomington, Ind., there were stirrings. Bob Knight, the legendary basketball coach who had been put on zero-tolerance probation, had barely survived the Neil Reed choking incident, but had a new issue pop up when he angrily ?confronted student Kent Harvey. We had been hearing that school president Myles Brand was unhappy and ready to move on Knight -- read: fire him -- but when it might happen, we had no idea.
So I left for Sydney, armed with a bunch of books and movies, ready to kill some time on the way to the other side of the world.
Once I arrived in LA, I hopped a shuttle to the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, a familiar spot where I had stayed previously, and headed. toward the sports bar (of course). It was a Sunday afternoon and I would spend by layover watching football on the big screens.
I was there for maybe 45 minutes when I noticed a crawl on the bottom of the TV screen:
Bob Knight has been fired by Indiana University.
Or something like that.
You get the idea.
It was time to go to work. I grabbed my computer and walked to the hotel lobby, where I wouldn't be disturbed by the football games. I had heard all hell was starting to break loose in Bloomington, and if I had been home, I would have headed down to campus. Instead, I was in the Marriott lobby, trying to make sense of the biggest story to break since I arrived a few months earlier.
So I wrote and wrote and eventually posted the piece to my editors, who did their magic.
Then as I was getting ready to leave and head back to the airport, who walks into the hotel but then-Kansas coach Roy Williams? So, of course, I intercepted him and after a quick trip to his room, he came back down to the lobby and talked about Knight. Another story. Great.
I'll say now what I said/wrote 25 years ago. It was the right decision. I know it wasn't a popular decision in most quarters, but based on years of misbehavior, the Reed and Harvey incidents were the last straw. I don't say this because I had a fraught relationship with Knight, as did most journalists. I say this because Knight, who demanded discipline from everybody except himself, had jumped the shark. He was out of control, and he was becoming an embarrassment.
I give the late Brand credit.
It takes guts, and other body parts, to fire a legendary coach.
Since then, of course, the IU basketball program has mostly been an unholy mess. They had moments of success with Mike Davis, Tom Crean and Kelvin Sampson, but for the most part, it's been an exercise in mediocrity. This is what happens when you let trustees and school presidents make the call on head coaches. The hope is all that will change now with Scott Dolson, the man who gave us Curt Cignetti, hiring Darian DeVries.
Nobody had the kind of wild success Knight had, and it's highly unlikely anybody will ever match him. But on this day 25 years ago, Brand grew a backbone and jettisoned Knight, and it was the necessary move.
Bob Kravitz is an award-winning columnist who has been in the sports journalism business for 43 years. He's worked at Sports Illustrated, the Indianapolis Star, The Athletic and other publications, and is now an Indiana-based publisher at Roundtable Sports. You can follow him on X @bkravitz.