By Leonard Shapiro
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
10:39 AM
Jeremy Schaap knows he's almost certain to bump into Bob Knight in the ESPN cafeteria at the company's Bristol, Conn. headquarters over the next few weeks. And when he does, he also has a pretty good idea about what he'll likely say to the latest addition to the cable network's stable of college basketball shrieking heads.
"First, I would hope that he'll pick up the tab," Schaap said in a recent telephone interview. "Then I hope I can tell him that he's got a long way to go before he's Digger Phelps."
Eight years ago, Knight was not especially happy with Schaap's line of legitimately tough questioning during an exclusive interview about his recent firing as Indiana's head basketball coach. In typical raging bully mode, Knight told Schaap, the son of the late sports journalist, author and broadcaster Dick Schaap, that, "you've got a long way to go to be as good as your dad."
That inappropriate putdown said far more about Knight than it did about Jeremy Schaap, an immensely talented sports journalist, author and broadcaster in his own right. The two haven't had much contact ever since, but Schaap also said he was not the least bit surprised -- nor particularly upset -- that ESPN had hired Knight as a basketball analyst a month after he stepped down on Feb. 4 as the head coach of Texas Tech midway through the 2007-08 season.
"It's not unexpected," Schaap said of Knight's employment as a studio analyst for March Madness, with his first appearance scheduled on Wednesday, March 12. "I assumed when Bobby decided to retire, he'd probably wind up working at ESPN because it's where retired coaches always seems to go. Am I extremely comfortable with people who disparage the media becoming members of the media? At some level, there is something troubling about it in the abstract.
"But these roles are usually reserved for people like him who are not really paid members of the media. They're emeritus coaches. Was Bill Parcells a member of the media? No, of course not. And Bobby was usually available to the media. At least he talked to us. It's not like a Steve Carlton situation, where (the former Philadelphia pitcher) refused any interview requests. So I can't say it really bothers me."
Still, Knight has always been a slasher and basher of the media, a man who once said sportswriters were "one or two steps above a prostitute" on the career ladder. On another occasion, he was equally scornful, saying that "all of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."
ESPN certainly was not immune from his ire back in 1987 when Knight went off on the so-called worldwide leader after a Monday night game between Indiana and Wisconsin in Madison, an 86-85 triple overtime Hoosier victory that ended at about 11:15 p.m.
"It's just ridiculous for us to be leaving here to gets in class, and we won't be home until 3 in the morning," Knight ranted that night, according to the Milwaukee Journal. "This Monday night television is bull¿It's time the presidents or somebody stepped in and laid some rules down on when these kids can play and can't play, how much class they miss, and the hell with ESPN because this is an absolute ridiculous thing to put a college student through."
Of course, when Knight was hired two weeks ago, he had a much different view now that he's about to cash the network's paychecks to appear on pre-game, halftime and post-game shows, as well as SportsCenter, ESPNews and ESPN Radio.
"ESPN," he said in a statement, "has been real good for college basketball."
But will Knight be real good for ESPN college basketball?
Judging from his first appearance on ESPN Radio, with Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg a few days after he signed on, this may not exactly be a match made in hoops heaven.
When he was asked on that national sports talk show about Indiana University's recent firing of serial cheating coach Kelvin Sampson for continuing recruiting violations, Knight insisted, "I haven't paid any attention to that." When Greenberg followed up, Knight quickly shut him down, saying "I appreciate your doggedness, but we're done with that subject."
Still, Norby Williamson, ESPN's executive vice president for production, keeps insisting to anyone who will listen that Knight's hiring was a no-brainer.
"He is a compelling figure who people will listen to," he told Sports Illustrated's web site, SI.com. "If our goal is to provide the best information, the most analysis and the most entertainment for basketball and sports fans, I don't think we're doing our job unless we take a chance and get a person of Knight's stature to come and work for us."
Bob Ley, a long-time ESPN anchor and host of its exemplary "Outside the Lines" investigative series, said he also had no problem with Knight's hiring.
"We're in the entertainment business," he said in a telephone interview last week. "And Bob Knight has forgotten more basketball than any of us has ever learned. He's a galvanizing figure. But I also have to say, this is not easy work. I've seen it in every sport where we bring in athletes or coaches who have just retired. At some point, the reservoir of knowledge will dry up, and you really have to work at this. You just can't show up.
"I think he can be good. If Dick (Vitale) and Digger (Phelps, his studio co-hosts) can bring out the best in him, it will be win-win-win all around."
Personally, I've got mixed feelings on ESPN's decision to hire Knight. As someone who has criticized networks for employing past media-unfriendly athlete/louts like Bill Walton and Sterling Sharpe, the knee-jerk in me says this is all wrong and may even end badly. Will Knight, for example, walk off the set, as he once did on ESPN's "Cold Pizza" show, when he was asked about the recent firing of his own successor, Mike Davis, a few years ago?
And yet, despite that first frosty radio appearance with Mike and Mike, I also believe Knight actually could be an asset, as long as he behaves himself and tells us what he really thinks about a wide variety of issues he rarely ducked during his coaching career.
The by-play with his fellow hosts actually could be quite riveting, if Knight stays true to his long-time public stances on the importance of graduating athletes, on making certain players go to class, on criticizing cheaters, on speaking out about the hypocrisy of so many college presidents on so many facets of big-time, big-money college sports.
If he fawns all over his former coaching colleagues a la see-no-evil Vitale, if he fails to speak out against players leaving school after their freshman and sophomore years, if he doesn't go after the NBA (another ESPN partner) for allowing high school kids to turn pro, he never should have signed up for this gig in the first place.
And if he doesn't at least buy Jeremy Schaap lunch in the company cafeteria, he really will have a long way to go just to be Digger Phelps, and light years to approach the late great, Dick Schaap or his son Jeremy as world-class broadcasters.
E-Mail of the Week
Although I hardly ever find myself indulging myself in one of your so eloquently written pieces, I am shocked that you are still writing for The Washington Post. After so confidently stating that the Redskins hopes of postseason football were entirely dashed after the passing of Sean Taylor last season (on Comcast SportsNite), and a morning-after article that completely misinterpreted the life and times of that same Redskin Hero, I thought you had no hope in this city. You had to utilize your entire next column just to apologize, if you don't remember. I suppose I may have been a bit harsh then but now, you find the need to praise a man who completely embarrassed the franchise. Although Myron Cope was a fabulous broadcaster, there was no need to include that moment in which he embarrassed our franchise. Your writing leaves me with one question, how in the world are you still writing for this publication?
Matt Grzeskiewicz
Bowie, Md.
Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or Badgerlen@aol.com.
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