Bob Knight Resigns

This is old news by now but this being a college basketball blog, it would be prudent if I commented. Yes, Bob Knight has resigned, handing over the reigns of Texas Tech to his son Pat. I'm not going to speculate why he did this or anything like that; apparently he was "tired." Fair enough. But what I will say is that in the long pantheon of sports villains, Bob Knight is one of the most fascinating. He was an unbelievable coach, and while the numbers say he is the best ever, there is far more than numbers to his brilliance. For all of his flaws, Bob Knight never committed any violations in recruiting and it quickly became evident that he didn't need to. He always had great players but for many of them you could argue that it was Knight who made them great. He certainly didn't have a top five recruiting class every year and he still had incredible success.

And amidst all of that, there are probably people out there that will remember him solely for being a complete asshole. Between his treatment of the media and the tons of players he drove away from the Hoosiers, ultimately driving himself out of the program, Knight unfortunately did enough to overshadow his amazing coaching brilliance. I never read Season On the Brink, it's on my shortlist on books to read soon, but from what I've heard, what was the most in depth look anyone has gotten into the life of Bob Knight, appears to only cloud his legacy even further, chronicling the methods of a legendary coach and a legendary jerk. And now that his career has abruptly ended, I think most college basketball fans are still trying to figure out the right way to remember him.

Anyway, here are some of the good pieces I have come across on the Bob Knight deal. Enjoy.

- Will Leitch at world-conquering sports blog Deadspin wrote a great little obit on Knight's career. Leitch grew up an Illinois fan and went to school there, by the way.

- I believe Andy Katz was the first to get to Pat Knight for his reaction. It will be interesting to see if Pat can ever coach his way out of his father's legacy.

- Pretty good column from Gary Parrish at CBS on Knight's multi-faceted legacy. He takes Knight to task for doing this midseason and while I'm not sure I agree, it's a good read. Pat Forde at ESPN shares the same opinion.

- Inside the Hall is a great Hoosiers blog and they had some interesting discourse in the comments section of this post on the retirement.

- Big old look back on his career from the Indianapolis Star. I'm still waiting on Terry Hutchens, a great college hoops writer who covered Knight for years, to weigh in.

- The Indiana student paper gets some nice reaction from former Hoosiers. Nice work by them. Us kids aren't as dumb as we look.

- Nice piece by Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News.

- I can't find the exact link to that Sports Illustrated article on the Bob Knight/Neil Reed thing but I did find this, former players and acquaintances speaking out on his madness.

- And here is the (in)famous chair throwing incident.