FanHouse Bob Knight

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Even before the start of both events during the past two days to celebrate the seven inductees into this year's Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame, everybody hoped. Everybody prayed. In fact, everybody who bleeds Hoosier red meant no harm, but they wanted Bob Knight to do the wrong thing.

Instead, Knight did the right thing.

He stayed away. And, yes, I know these aren't the same folks who used that myth nine years ago to get rid of the greatest college basketball coach ever.

After a nearly year-long battle with pancreatic cancer, NCAA president Myles Brand died today. He was 67.

In 2003, Brand was named as the first-ever university president to take over the NCAA's top job. Among his many ventures, he made a significant push to get collegiate athletics more academically focused. He believed the NCAA sports -- namely football and basketball -- were too much like professional sports and he wanted to change the culture, using the phrase, "turn down the volume."

Brand is most famous, though, for being the administrator who helped take down Bob Knight at Indiana University.

A little over a week ago, Indiana University announced it would be inducting Bob Knight into its Hall of Fame. In the nine days since then, there has been no shortage of discussion around the state of Indiana, message boards, newspapers and local talk radio. Normally, the induction of someone with Knight's accolades wouldn't cause such a stir. He won three national championships, 12 Big Ten titles and went to the Final Four fives times in 29 seasons at Indiana. He's currently the winningest coach in Division-I history.

But that doesn't tell the whole story, of course.

March Madness is heating up, so if Bob Knight is on ESPN talking about athletes who have impressed him, he must be talking about college basketball players, right? Not quite. In an appearance on ESPN Wednesday, Knight said that, in reality, he believes the best athletes in the country right now are not American basketball players but a visiting troupe of Russian skaters.

Every year, Selection Sunday officially kicks off the beginning of March Madness. Usually, the three-day lull between the release of the almighty brackets and the actual beginning of games is marked by complaining, whether it's Memphis not getting a No. 1 seed -- which is going to end up being the best thing that ever happened to the Tigers, by the way -- the Big Ten or Pac-10 being allegedly overrated, or the dwindling of mid-major entrants. It's always something.

Still, we can put up with that. Debate and discussion are good things. There is one suggestion, however, that is so absurd I'm almost embarrassed to dignify it: Some people, including several predominant commentators, want to expand the tourney field to 128.

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As the buzzer sounded in Conseco Fieldhouse early Thursday evening, the Indiana Hoosiers had lost to Penn State by a count of 66 to 51. Tom Crean's first season as head basketball coach had mercifully concluded. The Hoosiers will miss the NCAA Tournament for only the third time since A Season on the Brink was published. They will miss any sort of postseason play for the second time since 1977. In fact, this was -- statistically speaking -- the worst team in Indiana basketball history.

The funny thing? I was much more relieved when last season ended, and I guarantee I'm not alone among Indiana alumni.

When ESPN hired Bob Knight as a college basketball analyst, some questioned whether the coach with the legendary temper would be able to work as a TV commentator without dropping any four-letter words.

Bob Knight the basketball coach was never afraid to express opinions that might make people upset, whether talking to his players or his bosses or the referees, and Bob Knight the ESPN commentator hasn't lost that trait.

That's never been more apparent than it was when he talked about Alex Rodriguez on ESPN Radio.

There was a hefty dose of speculation yesterday that Bob Knight had interest in the now vacant head coaching position at the University of Georgia.

And today, on ESPN radio, Knight spoke with Mike Tirico and Scott Van Pelt, presumably to dismiss those rumors; instead, Knight indicated exactly why they have legs. He later followed that up by mentioning his interest in returning to coaching during the Tennessee-Oklahoma women's game.

Bob Knight has been great since he moved from the bench to the booth -- "Knight Watch" aside. He looks happy to be calling games for the WWL and he does a good job of it, so there's little reason to think he might want to get back into coaching.

Unless you listen to the AJC's Furman Bisher, who wrote Saturday that Knight is interested in the recently opened Georgia head coaching position.