Good Knight or Goodbye

The chair-chucking, vase-heaving, neck-clenching, tongue-lashing, knock-down days of Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight apparently came to an ordered end Monday at a dramatic downtown news conference packed with Klieg lights and reporters.

No, the legendary coach was not fired.

Instead, he was metaphorically clipped to a leash and bound to a fence.

By mandate of Indiana University President Myles Brand, Knight will change his ways or cease commanding the proud program he has dominated and controlled for 29 years.

Not only will Knight never again wrap his thick hands around the neck of a student-athlete, Brand said, the coach has even been instructed to cooperate with the media.

On a momentous Monday ignited by a chain-reaction March allegation that Knight choked former player Neil Reed at a 1997 practice, Knight agreed to a set of conditions that allowed him to keep his job.

“This is a zero-tolerance policy,” Brand said. “If Coach Knight had not agreed to all these steps, I would have recommended he be terminated now.”

As stipulated, Knight was suspended for three games next seasons and fined $30,000.

He also agreed that any “verifiable inappropriate physical contact discovered in the future with players, members of the university community or others in connection with his employment at IU” would be cause for immediate termination.

Knight agreed that, at functions in which he is a representative of the university, he will conduct himself with “appropriate decorum and civility. Included among these occasions are interactions with the news media.”

Brand also announced that a commission would be established to develop policies for appropriate behavior for all coaches, athletic department employees and student-athletes, to be headed by Athletic Director Clarence Doninger, whose relationship with Knight can generously be described as “strained.”

Can a 59-year-old coach who has brilliantly bullied his way to three national titles and 763 victories, who has ruled by fear and intimidation and presided over a basketball fiefdom suddenly adhere to such a code of conduct?

“He’s given me his word he’ll take these steps to change his behavior,” Brand said. “He is a man of integrity. He says he will live up to it. If he cannot, he will be terminated.”

Knight did not attend Monday’s conference conference. Reporters were told he was en route to Europe on a previously planned vacation.

Before leaving on vacation, Knight brushed off a couple of reporters who sought comment in Bloomington.

“Why talk now when so many things are said without ever giving me a chance to talk?” Knight said.

Knight issued a statement that read, in part: “I have absolutely no problem with guidelines. The establishment of effective and proper guidelines can, in the long run, help me become a better coach.

“As I have said before, I recognize that I have a problem with my temper. For those times it has ever caused me to do anything that gave anyone understandable and justifiable reason to be upset, I am sincerely sorry.”

Brand said Knight will offer a formal apology to athletic department secretary Jeanette Hartgraves, whom Knight verbally berated in 1998, but the coach will not be required to offer a formal apology to Reed.

“He offered a general apology to all others involved,” Brand said.

Reed, appearing Monday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” called the university’s handling of the situation “shady.”

After reporting the choking incident, he said, “I was basically discarded and almost run out of town. . . .

“They did conduct an investigation, but it was an oral investigation and there was no written record of it.”

A seven-week probe by the nine-member university board of trustees concluded that Knight had put his hands on Reed’s throat. John D. Walda, who headed the investigation, said a forensics expert verified that a videotape of the incident was authentic.

As to whether Knight choked Reed, Walda said, “that depends on how you use the word ‘choking.’ ”

cusations against Knight, many of which Walda said were substantiated.

“What we found was a lengthy pattern of troubling behavior by Coach Knight,” Walda said.

Despite that pattern, with incidents dating back more than 20 years, Brand said there “was no incident that, by itself, rose to the level of termination.”

Yet, Brand said he was considering termination as late as Saturday night, when Knight, who has long worked deftly behind the scenes, apparently saved his job with some last-minute maneuvering.

First, he independently issued a 330-word statement admitting to a decades-old problem with his anger management, in a sense throwing an olive branch to Brand.

He then impressed Brand with a late-night meeting at the president’s campus residence. Brand said the meeting was unique.

“I had never seen him before contrite and apologetic,” Brand said.

Brand said the statement and meeting affected his decision.

“It had an effect on my thinking,” he said. “At that point, I didn’t believe he could change his behavior. That opened the window.”

But how long before Knight slams it shut?

At Monday’s news conference, Brand and Walda were besieged by reporters who wondered if the university was yet again kowtowing to Knight and capitulating in the face of intense in-state scrutiny.

“There are no sacred cows at Indiana,” Waldo proclaimed.

Waldo denied charges of hypocrisy in the treatment of Knight versus other faculty members. Knight is a full-tenured professor.

“I think the process was much more rigorous than a professor here would have,” Waldo said of the investigation.

Brand also fiercely defended his decision. “Bob Knight got away with nothing and certainly will not get away with anything in the future,” he insisted.

Brand acknowledged that the university might have been lax with Knight, but he said those days are over.

“We will rectify that,” he said. “There has been a systemic problem.”

As for charges of a university whitewash, well, there is that too.

Murray Sperber, a tenured Indiana professor and one of Knight’s most vociferous critics, sat in a Bloomington coffee shop Monday, correctly predicting Knight’s job would be spared.

Sperber said it was the “culture” of Indiana basketball that has allowed Knight to go unchecked for almost three decades. He wondered how much more Indiana’s tainted image could take.

“IU has reached the point of diminished returns,” he said. “This school looks ridiculous in the higher education community.”

Sperber wondered how the school was going to monitor Knight’s conditions.

“How will this university look if, next month, more stuff comes out?” he asked.

While Brand was emphatic in claiming a breach of Knight’s conditions would lead to his termination, some of the conditions would seem subjective.

Brand said Knight’s tirade against an NCAA staff person during the 1995 tournament would now be grounds for dismal, but he left wiggle room regarding Knight’s daily behavior.

“Yes,” Brand said, “there will be judgment calls.”

Sperber predicts it’s only a matter of time before Knight erupts.

“For the good of the institution, he should resign,” Sperber said.

Yet, those who play for Knight applauded Monday’s decision, despite the anguish the coach’s actions have caused.

“I’d rather have Coach around and be under the microscope than not have Coach around,” Jarrad Odle, a sophomore forward, said.

Several Indiana players had threatened to leave the program if Knight was fired.

For the Hoosiers who stayed, Monday was a cease-fire.

“I just want the Civil War to be over,” Dane Fife, a sophomore guard, said of the division in the Indiana athletic department.

How does it play out in the end?

“Everyone’s happy,” Fife said. “We got our coach, and the people who made the allegations got him in trouble.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SANCTIONS

* Suspended for three regular-season games in the 2000-01 season.

* Fined $30,000, to be withheld from his salary.

* Told any future “verifiable inappropriate physical contact” with players, university staff or members of the university community related to his employment will result in his immediate firing.

* Ordered to demonstrate “appropriate decorum and civility” during public appearances, including news conferences, in which he serves as a representative of the school. Failure to do so could result in further sanctions, including firing.

An Indiana Knightmare

Indiana University addressed the longtime “pattern of inappropriate behavior” by basketball Coach Bob Knight Monday by suspending him for three games for the 2000-2001 season, imposing a $30,000 fine and having him apologize individually to one secretary and to others as a group. Any act by Knight that violates a supervised “zero-tolerance policy” or is deemed to be embarrassing to the university will result in his immediate dismissal, university President Myles Brand said.

THE STATEMENT

Text of Bob Knight’s statement that Indiana University trustee president John D. Walda read at Monday’s news conference:

“President Myles Brand, in a meeting with me, gave me a set of guidelines he expects me to follow if I want to continue as Indiana University’s basketball coach.

“I have absolutely no problem with the guidelines. The establishment of effective and proper guidelines can in the long run help me become a better coach.

“As I have said before, I recognize that I have a problem with my temper. For those times it has ever caused me to do anything that gave anyone understandable and justifiable reason to be upset, I am sincerely sorry.”

CAREER AT A GLANCE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS

* 1971-- Became coach at Indiana.

* 1976-- Won first NCAA championship, team has 32-0 record.

* 1979-- Convicted in absentia for hitting Puerto Rican policeman at Pan American Games.

* 1981-- Won second national championship.

* 1984-- Coached United States to Olympic gold medal.

* 1985-- Tossed chair across court during game against Purdue.

* 1987-- Won third NCAA championship.

* 1988-- Became winningest coach in Big Ten history; refused to let team finish exhibition game against Soviet Union after his ejection; said in NBC interview: “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

* 1989-- Won 500th game; honored as national coach of the year.

* 1991-- Selected to Basketball Hall of Fame.

* 1992-- Gave mock whipping to a black player.

* 1995-- Reprimanded and fined $30,000 by NCAA for outburst during NCAA tournament.

* 1997-- Won 700th game.

* 1998-- Fined $10,000 by Big Ten for berating referee.

* 2000-- Investigated after former player contends Knight choked him during practice in 1997; Knight apologizes for his temper.