Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
With Indiana University's basketball coach dumped for good, a vocal critic ponders returning to a post-Knight campus.
Sep 12, 2000 | My role as a minor character in the Bob Knight saga began last March. I appeared on a CNNSI broadcast that featured former Indiana University player Neil Reed, who was complaining that Knight had choked him during practice a few years before. The CNN anchor asked me whether or not I.U. would investigate Reed's charges, or those of other players concerning off-court incidents involving the coach, and if the allegations proved true, would the school sanction Knight? Past history, I said, would suggest that no one within the university or the state of Indiana would do anything about Knight's conduct. I also termed the coach "The Emperor of Indiana."
Since the March CNNSI program on Knight, through the April revelation of the tape showing him choking Reed and into May when Indiana University rendered its judgment that he could remain as coach under a "zero tolerance" policy, I continued to speak out about the case. I mainly discussed what I had talked about for many years: how big-time college sports, particularly its scandals, can overshadow the academic purpose of a university and cause great harm to a school. I did not speak out because I wished to hurt my university; quite the opposite. I have invested 29 years of my life at I.U. and I love the school. I simply have a very different vision of it -- one focused on higher education -- than do its basketball fans.
My remarks infuriated Knight's fans and they rained insults upon me, both in vilifying e-mails and also on their group Web sites. The vilifying e-mails continued even after the university's May verdict that Knight could continue coaching. On the fans' enemies list, I had risen to No. 3. Reed, because he had precipitated the entire episode, rested securely at No. 1; former assistant coach Ron Felling, who allegedly had given the incriminating videotape to CNN, claimed No. 2. But neither Reed nor Felling had e-mail or any other kind of publicly available addresses. They had dropped from sight and the rabid Knight fans -- called Knazis by their detractors -- could never reach them. I, however, work for a public institution. In May, some of the fans discovered an easy way to find me.
The I.U. schedule of classes for the fall 2000 semester -- with thousands of copies in print and also posted on the I.U. Web site -- listed my name, the courses that I would teach, the room numbers where I would teach the classes and the times and days the courses would be taught. Soon I found my fall class schedule on the largest I.U. fan Web site, with such comments as "Let's go to Spermie's classes and tell him exactly what we think of him." (Pejorative names are part of their dehumanization process: It is easier to threaten a cartoon character than a real person with a spouse and children.)
I also received phone calls, including a chilling one ending: "If you don't shut up, I'll shut you up." And I spotted a shocking posting on the I.U. fan Web site with the subject heading "I see dead bodies," listing my name along with other Knight critics.
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