The Bob Knight Affair: The Aftermath

What a day huh? For those of you that began with us on the radio show this morning, you know that it was an exciting and absurd day, in which a random blog post ended up bringing an apology from an ESPN analyst and Hall of Fame coach, all by sheer force of will. It truly was a lesson in modern alternative media and the way that the entire dynamic of news stories has changed. What is clear is that Bob Knight was forced to apologize for lying in a statement this past weekend and ESPN was forced to acknowledge the false nature of what he said. While Knight's apology was lame (more on that in a bit), it still was a pretty amazing result. This whole thing started when Beisner randomly found the Knight comments on Youtube, after searching for an early morning post. Think about that for a second...a controversy that led to a Sportscenter report began when Beisner found a random Youtube clip while eating cereal in the morning. That is brilliant. He posted the clip on KSR, and it was off to the races. Yesterday, the story got some steam and national writers like Mike Decourcy and Dick Weiss wrote on how ridiculous Knight and his comments were. Then came a statement from Mitch Barnhart, tweets from Patrick Patterson and Demarcus Cousins and a host of Twitter comments from around the college basketball universe (absent ESPN of course), to give the story even more traction. Then we got up this morning and decided that it was time to take it into another gear. One of the reasons I love KSR is that it allows those outside the media to hold the media to task, in the same way they do athletes and coaches. If you missed the radio show (and you can listen below), we decided to use all means possible to get a statement from ESPN on the issue. We called Bobby Knight's personal PR person and had her on air...and she told us that Knight would not do an interview...ever. Than Fake Barney called and left her a message that was...well a moment of radio gold. We called ESPN and spoke to a woman who hung up on us and said calling on the air was "not appropriate." It was actually as much fun as I have ever had on the radio and the momentum kept building all morning. Then the two tipping points occurred. Jay Williams came on the air and said Knight should apologize, a fairly courageous thing for Williams to do, considering he is a fellow ESPN personality. Think about the equivalent remark occurring...what if Kirk Herbstreit demanded that Craig James apologize to Mike Leach for comments made off ESPN? It would be a big deal...and Williams' comments were a big deal. It led the great blog SportsbyBrooks.com to do a post on the subject, citing Williams and his comments on the radio. This forced ESPN's hand, as Sports By Brooks is read by nearly every sports journalist and ESPN had no choice but to respond. As the day went on, we waited. But then at the end of the day, Knight came out with his lame apology. Make no mistake, Knight's apology did not go nearly far enough and is a joke. He didnt admit to making false statements and instead apologized for making it "personal", rather than for blatantly lying. But he did apologize, a result that was shocking. Think about this for a second....36 hours after a random blog post on KSR, Bobby Knight is forced to apologize for one of the few times in his career and ESPN has to do a story on one of their personalities lying in a public speech. It really is an amazing result, regardless of the fact that it did not go far enough. As the day ended, I had a long conversation with an ESPN spokesman that was...well frustrating. He had no comment on whether Knight would be disciplined and tried to evade any questions on whether ESPN would acknowledge the comments were false. Soon after our conversation, ESPN changed its story on Knight to say his comments were "erroneous", but they gave no further statement. Tomorrow on the radio, I will recount in detail the conversation, including a testy moment at the end where Mike Humes, the ESPN spokesman accused me of not being "as professional as the other Kentucky media who accept our statement without further questioning." It was a great day around here and something worth celebrating. In the long run, the Knight apology means very little. Nothing is really changed in the world and in the grand scheme of things, our lives are the same. But it was an example of the power of the Big Blue Nation at work. The radio fun, Vanetti and I going into it on KSTV and the chance to get to talk to Sports by Brooks, Jay Williams (and randomly) Winston Bennett, all on the fly, was beyond cool. I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did. And as far as Bobby Knight...we still arent done with him yet. But for now, today was a good time.