Rutgers fires basketball coach after release of video showing player abuse, gay slurs

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Bad Zebra

And is there any doubt he would have been fired even sooner had the technology existed back then?

JRut's contention is that Knight's tactics were common among top college programs. Not sure I want to believe that. Maybe I'm delusional but I want to believe Boeheim, Williams, Pitino, Cady, Calhoun, Valvano, Smith, Coach K and other winners were tough and used pretty foul language at times...but didn't physically and mentally abuse their players as a rule.

You would be wrong on a few levels about my opinion. I did not say it was common, I said that many coaches did things that we find objectionable now in Knight at that time. The difference we did not have 24 hours SportsCenter and social media and YouTube. And you mentioned Coach K who played under Knight and has a different off-court persona that Knight never tried to have. Coach K in many circles is seen as a dick to officials at least and uses very over the top language in many cases (He is after all a Polish kid from a tough part of Chicago, so not a choir boy that went to West Point where he played for Knight). Knight did not interview well and did not care and still does not care on many levels if you see him in recent interviews. And even some of the coaches you mentioned are much younger than Knight. They were not Rupp or Glenn Haskins or other old-timers where Knight learned a lot of stuff from or during his original era. I am not sure Rupp would survive if we had social media and heard his comments about race and other issues in this era. You really think coaches did not call a player a "fag" or other socially insensitive words back then? Rice is getting ripped for just his words, but his actions are so over the top hardly anyone is even talking about those things.

You notice you never see these coaches today with a mic at the college level on during games like you see in the NBA and conversations are not allowed in private moments. Coaches have the opportunity to shape their image if they do the right things. But players that played for Knight love the man just like some of those other coaches. Because even the stuff brought up about Knight were not all on-court issues or stuff done directly in his job. But yes I believe if Knight threw a chair today they would be in big trouble today for sure, but not necessarily for the other things people are upset by after that IMO.

Right now they are talking about how they do not see Rice working again anytime soon at the D2 or D3 levels as well because of the way he acted in practice when not everyone tapes practices and other times they are not around a camera. In my opinion Rice will be very similar to what Dave Bliss is going through for some time.

Peace