Knight Makes Debut, Proves He Is a Company Man

By Brian Powell
Bobby Knight made his debut on ESPN last night and, much to my chagrin, he didn’t curse on-air or throw a chair.
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He first appeared on SportsCenter with Rece Davis and Digger Phelps sporting the above sweater and went into a great synopsis of how Syracuse threw away their game against Villanova earlier. That was immediately followed by him scowling as Digger Phelps talked for two minutes. Knight then came back on camera to discuss how some teams win games and some teams lose games. He explained that West Virginia didn’t win the game but Providence lost it, which is a dead-on assessment if you watched the game. There was some more talk about the Tournament and what big conferences need to have when matching up against smaller schools with better records.
Later on in the show he went into great detail on how he would play bench players during the conference tournaments, so his starters could get rest. He seemed really opposed to conference tournaments and insisted he would almost rather lose the first game than win the whole thing.
At halftime of the Cincy-Pitt game, he was only on screen for a few minutes as ESPN felt the need to show us the Yankees-Rays fight for the 50th time. When I flipped to ESPN2, they had a completely different team doing a halftime show. So, ESPN hired Bob Knight, promoted him all day, and he was on screen for a total of about five minutes. Doesn’t make much sense to me, but whatever works for you, WWL.
It’s not that he isn’t insightful (quite the opposite, actually), or that I didn’t enjoy him, it’s just that he DOES NOT look like he wants to be there. As soon as he was done talking he would either scowl and not look directly into the camera or fold his arms and look down at his notes as Digger Phelps joked that he’s his older brother. I kept waiting for him to just shove Digger’s highlighter into his mouth to shut him up. I guess there’s a whole month for that to go down.
All in all, his basketball knowledge is unmatched by anyone at ESPN, but his personality needs some work.
Best Knight Quotes:
“In my own mind, I would probably lean towards those schools in the major conferences [over mid-majors] because of their in-conference schedules.”
“I’m really pleased to be with someone like you Rece, and that you have someone like me to deal with Digger.”
“I was really opposed to conference tournaments and that may be why my teams didn’t play particularly well in conference tournaments.”
“I would rest our players [during the conference tourney] to get them ready for the NCAA Tournament.”
“Can you claim something else with me other than being related?” - To Digger Phelps
Gratuitous Video of the Debut:

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