Save outrage for what counts

By The Associated Press     Mar 18, 2003

After the events of the past few weeks, more outrage over college basketball seemed impossible.

Then came Sunday, like some kind of comic relief.

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In no time at all, it was easy to forget the reports of academic fraud, the under-the-table payments and the college presidents in places as different as Georgia and St. Bonaventure looking the other way as coaches and student-athletes treated their programs like cash machines.

Instead, Arizona fans and the talking heads were outraged how tough a road the NCAA Tournament selection committee will make the Wildcats travel to claim another national championship.

Illinois’ backers, meanwhile, were outraged that winning a tough conference tournament didn’t earn them anything higher than a fourth seed.

Texas Tech fans were outraged at being denied any slot at all. But coach Bob Knight was not one of them. His fury has always been reserved for the programs that cut corners.

“We had chances and just didn’t take advantage of them,” said Knight, whose team settled for an NIT bid.

It’s a strange time any time Knight comes off sounding like a beacon of reason. But compared to the scandals breaking out on every side of him, Knight’s virtues suddenly seem more interesting than his vices.

The plague of college sports at the moment is a lack of accountability and that’s never been his problem. Knight returned his $250,000 base salary even before Tech was out of the running for an NCAA berth.

When asked about it again Sunday, he said, “For some reason, this team is not as well taught as it should be.”

Knight followed that up with a story about shoveling snow off a neighbor’s walk when he was a kid in Ohio. He did it so poorly the first time, his mother ordered him to do the job over. When Knight returned home, he remembered her “asking if I’d given the money back, too.”

When the answer came back no, she ordered him back to the neighbor’s again.

“I learned that lesson in a hurry,” Knight said.

That was when kids routinely stayed true to their schools long enough to learn to play, and coaches were the unquestioned stars. Guys such as Knight committed to a system, recruited kids who could play within it, groomed a few of them to become serviceable pros (or better) and then started winning everything in sight.

UCLA’s John Wooden was 54 when he won the first of a record 10 championships. North carolina’s Dean Smith, who won more games than any other coach, was 51 when he won his first. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski was 44.

Knight, who went by “Bobby” back in 1976 when he won the first of his three, was only 35 at the time; that precociousness was why everybody in the game put up with so much from the red-sweatered terror for so long.

But no one builds programs the old-fashioned way anymore. Once university presidents and conference commissioners figured out how much money was floating around, increasing pressure to win was applied from the top down. Heroes will be harder to find from here on out. More kids find it impossible to say “No” to the lure of NBA money, the best ones right out of high school.

The list of coaches who stay in one place long enough with a chance to win is still impressive — besides Krzyzewski, there’s Lute Olson of Arizona, Gary Williams of Maryland, Jim Calhoun of Connecticut, Roy Williams of Kansas — but growing shorter all the time.

So when you’re filling out the bracket sheet and looking for somebody to root for without holding your nose, look for guys who have learned how to put down roots and get results in a hurry without compromising all their principles.

You could do worse this go-round than to settle on Tubby Smith at Kentucky. Five years ago at the Final Four in San Antonio, Smith was new to the Wildcats and was asked about the story behind his nickname. It turns out he was one of 17 kids growing up in a household in rural Maryland and he hated surrendering the bathtub to his siblings. But that afternoon, a day before the biggest game of his career, Smith told another story from his childhood instead.

He remembered his father telling him and several siblings to clear the weeds from rows of beans so he could drive a tractor between them. Smith didn’t finish his job because he tried to help his brothers and sisters finish theirs. As a result, none of the rows was ready for cultivating. He never asked what responsibility meant again.

“So he beat everybody. I couldn’t understand that then,” Smith said. “But he said if everybody had just done their job, at least a few rows would have gotten done.”

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