same of truly rude,
giant or smelly person
made an impression
So what do you say when a guy like that dies?
John Feinstein, who wrote the bestselling book about Knight called “A Season on the Brink” said last week in the Washington Post that Knight’s two biggest flaws were pretending that he didn’t care what people thought of him (when he actually cared too much) and always having to have the last word, even if it hurt others and himself.
Still, Feinstein wrote, “He made an indelible impression on anyone who met him.”
That’s true.
But the same could be said of a truly rude person, a truly giant person, or a truly smelly person.
Making impressions is an incomplete summary of a life.
From the article, What do you say when a guy like Bobby Knight dies? by Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press, 11/5/2023.
My student era at the University of Michigan started in January, 1981.
It is a long and goofy story on how I got into Michigan and a lot of things, bizarre once-in-a-lifetime pieces of the administrative puzzle had to fall into place to get me into the place, but that’s for another time.
Just say that my roommates claimed Michigan changed admission rules to make sure it would never happen again.
It was the longest of long shots that I would be a student at Michigan at the beginning of 1981 but I was so sure the bet would pay off that I figured out a way to buy student season’s tickets to Michigan Basketball.
So it was that after a whirlwind two weeks that saw me find a place to live, I boarded at a frat house, sitting in class taking notes in History of Imperial Russia while looking out the windows through the iconic columns of Angell Hall while hearing the Michigan Bell Tower strike the hours that I found myself going to my first University of Michigan game as an official student.
That game was Michigan versus Indiana.
Michigan and Mike McGee versus Indiana and Isiah Thomas.
Bill Frieder versus Bobby Knight.
I had been to a lot of Michigan Basketball games.
Michigan was famous for having one of the quietest, hard to impress, hard to get to a reaction from crowds in all of college basketball.
But not this night.
Because of Bobby Knight.
Electricity was in the air.
And it was focused on one person.
Bobby Knight.
It was kinda scarry.
My sister had been in the same building years earlier when the infamous ‘Free John Sinclair’ rally was held.
Sinclair, a Michigan Student and part of the anti war era, had been arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 5 years in jail for having two cigarettes made of weed.
To everyone’s shock and surprise, John Lennon and Oko Ono showed up.
To everyone’s shock and surprise, Mr. Lennon refused to perform any Beatles songs.
Still, my sister remembered, Mr. Lennon, in a very spooky almost sinister way, controlled that audience.
I felt that with Mr. Knight.
If he gestured, the crowd oooooooooooooooooooed.
If he looked at something the crowd urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred.
And he was just standing there watching warmups.
Once the game started the crowd went crazy.
Knight was hard to please as a coach and unfortunately for his team, they were losing to Michigan.
Knight yelled.
The crowd roared.
Knight shook his fist, the crowd almost wet its collective pants in glee.
Knight turned and kicked the scorers table and the crowd lost its mind.
With just under two minutes to go, and Indiana down by 6 points, Knight had had enough and walked off the court.
Just left his team to figure out how to lose by themselves.
Who does that?
And they crowd went absolutely bananas.
And Michigan won.
Beat Isiah Thomas.
But more, beat Bobby Knight.
And every person there that night, felt they had had a personal role in the way victory played out.
I left the game exhuasted.
We beat Bobby Knight and I was part of it.
It made an impression on me.
So what do you say when a guy like that dies?
He made beating him a lot more fun.
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