Coach Knight, The Record, and Seth Davis

First off, congratulations to Coach Bobby Knight on setting the career coaching record for NCAA Division I victories at 880. Like him or not, he has set a new standard that will be hard to match. Is he perfect? No. Like all humans, he has weaknesses. But I do not know what gives Sports Illustrated reporter/CBS Sports Basketball Analyst Seth Davis the right to continually rip into this man, even in this shining moment. Every time I hear him frothing at the mouth about Knight, I wonder what in his background, or what Coach Knight has done to him, has qualified him to spew his venom. Well, apparently nothing. In his recent column on the CNN/Si website, he lays himself bare by saying:

"I can't say I know Knight well -- actually, I can't say I know him at all -- but I have been vocal in criticizing his antics."

So there you have it, a writer who did not play college basketball but did work on the student newspaper at Duke. And since all Duke grads think they know all about college basketball, being a powerful team in the oh so mighty Atlantic Coach Conference, I guess this more than qualifies Davis to criticize Knight all he wants. Forget the fact that his players graduate, he has never cheated, and his former players that had the backbone to stick around are all loyal to him. Forget the fact that his West Point players say that what he taught them enabled them to survive in Viet Nam. We are all just supposed to listen to a born with a silver spoon in his mouth writer who has never even spent time with the man.

At least John Feinstein spent time with him before writing "A Season on the Brink".