Let’s get right to the clip.  Before you click the link, let me tell you what you are doing.  You are about to laugh your behind off and, if you choose to keep reading after you see the video, you are about to listen to me tell you why Bobby Knight is great.  Flawed perhaps, but definitely great.

WARNING:  THIS CLIP CONTAINS GRATUITOUS PROFANITY!!!! And I wish I had enough command of the English language to come up with a word more powerful than gratuitous.

Golf Your Way Outtakes

I hope you enjoyed watching that clip as much as I did the first time I saw it.

In order to properly understand Bobby Knight, you only need to understand how he came by the moniker “The General”…according to West Point legend, while he was a rookie coach for the Black Knights in 1965, he placed a phone call to the cadet barracks to talk to one of his players.  The CCQ (Cadet-in-Charge-of-Quarters — believe me, it’s as boring as it sounds) notified Coach Knight that the cadet was in talking to Captain So-and-So and could not come to the phone…and was promptly told that “General” Knight would like to talk to one of his players and Captain So-and-So should defer if knew what was good for him.

In that one moment, as in just about every other waking moment of his life, Coach Knight lets you know what he thinks is important…basketball and himself, in that order. 

Even at that early stage of his coaching career, he was so certain of his eventual success on a grand scale that his arrogance was somehow engaging.  He has had many successes and a few failures along the way, but when all is said and done, his legacy will be that he had a profound, positive and lasting impact on the game of basketball.  In fact, I think we can probably describe his impact in terms of legacies, as in, more than one.

Winning is appropriately Legacy #1.  He built winning programs everywhere he went and no one could out-think, out-wit, out-maneuver, or out-coach him in a big game.  In the words of the immortal Bum Phillips, he “could take his’n and beat your’n, or he could take your’n and beat his’n.”  Of course, Bum was describing Don Shula, but I believe the analogy is appropriate here. 

I am aware that some of The General’s approaches have become obsolete and he is perhaps a bit too much of a throwback, if there is such a thing, but you cannot for one second forget about the winning.  In 41-plus years of coaching basketball, his teams:

- won 902 games

- compiled a .700 Big Ten Conference winning percentage

- won 3 national championships

- won 20 or more games 27 times

- averaged 22 wins and 9 losses per season

- appeared in 28 NCAA tournaments

- won Olympic and Pan-American Games gold medals

His incredible effect on the modern game, particularly offensively, is his second legacy.  Sure, his defenses would always give you 40 minutes of  hustle, but the motion offense is what really cemented Knight’s legacy as a teacher of the art of basketball.  Screen..backcut…2 points.  Any questions?

His ability to graduate players at a staggeringly high rate compared to his contemporaries is perhaps the most impressive of all of his legacies.  The General has graduated 98% of his players…the national average for Division I basketball programs is 42%.

Lastly, his future legacy will be all of his former players that are coaching successful college basketball — Steve Alford and Mike Krzyzewski, to name just two.

Speaking of Coach K, please take a gander at this photo from the “General Knight” days. 

Yes indeed — the legend of Army basketball.  Sure, we haven’t played a game in March for the past 35 years, but we can claim The General and Coach K, and every single West Point graduate feels a little swell of pride in our chest every March when Coach K’s ring gets some air time on national TV.

While history may certainly remember the bitter end of his time at Indiana more than anything else, what I will remember most about Bobby Knight is that he genuinely cared about the things that mattered to him.  I was fortunate enough to live in Indiana for several years before his demise and unfortunate enough to live in Indiana and be forced to watch the turn of events that led to his dismissal played out in excruciating detail. 

He had a rough few years there — but that is but a tiny fraction of his time coaching.  I will choose to instead remember how much fun it was watching him out-coach everyone and how hard his teams fought for him.  I, for one, will miss The General.