Coach Knight takes center court, not men’s game
COMMENTARY
Jordan Blum

The crowd went wild with a sustained collective boo as the man everyone loves to hate slowly walked onto the court a couple minutes before tip-off.

Yep, Bobby Knight was in town. A coach so famous, or maybe infamous, we had to put him on the front page.

And, oh yeah, there was a game played too. One in which the Horned Frogs were completely outmanned and outmuscled by a taller, stronger and more fundamentally sound Texas Tech team, as evidenced by the 84-66 final score.

TCU fought hard to the end with no prevail, but even some Frog players had to admit feeling additional emotions due to Knight’s presence.

“I always want to be around the atmosphere of Coach Knight, around his legacy or whatever,” sophomore guard Corey Santee said. “It’s just like a dream. I want to shake myself sometimes because he’s really in front of me. I always see him on TV, movies. Like they had that movie on him. It would have been nice to beat him.”

Fans were admittedly focusing on the man on the sidelines as well.

“We got the tickets to see a coach and not the basketball game,” senior marketing major Tim Davis said. “But we were disappointed he didn’t get riled up or anything.”

It seemed for as much cheering as the crowd did — and they did a lot — that most fans focused just as much attention on either booing or heckling Knight with many of the same chants he’s surely heard throughout his coaching career.

Head coach Neil Dougherty said although he was happy about the crowd support, he was not necessarily pleased with the reasons the crowd turned out and the emphasis the fans put on Knight’s presence.

“I want (the fans) to come out and watch our team play, get behind our team, very nicely stated, regardless of who is in our gym and who their coach is,” Dougherty not-so-subtly said. “Because if we can accomplish that then our program is moving in the direction that I want it to and everyone else around here wants it to.”

And who can blame him? After all, until this game and in previous years fans haven’t exactly been lacking extra space to stretch out in or place their coats. Sure, the teams haven’t exactly been Final Four contenders lately, but students, faculty and the Fort Worth community weren’t exactly sitting on a waiting list to get into games during the peak years of the Billy Tubbs era either.

But Knight said he was pleased to help draw a large crowd.

“We came in here and played in front of a full house,” Knight said. “When’s the last time they had a complete sellout here? I don’t know, or how many times. But that’s great.”

Knight also talked about the financial contributions he has helped make to Christian-founded schools like SMU and TCU.

“We helped the Methodists make a hell of a lot of money last year, the Church of Christ this year,” he deadpanned. “I oughta get a Christian Fellowship award.”

Jordan Blum is a senior broadcast journalism major from New Orleans.