Playboy Interview: Bobby Knight

An actress once said that movies aren't plots or performances or philosophical presentations: "They are moments." If the audience left remembering a moment, if that moment was etched forever in the memory, then, she said, the endeavor could be considered worth while and successful. So, too, is it with sports in America. The moments are what is important.

And so is it that the career of Bobby Knight, the basketball coach at Indiana University, can be recalled in perfectly preserved moments. There, young and impetuous, his back to the camera, his form as flawless as that of the finest National Football League punter, he boots an unseen object skyward in protest of an unseen wrong. Now, a little older, a little grayer, he is standing in front of his team's bench--his plaid sports jacket open, his tie, as it perpetually is, at three quarters staff--gesturing, barking instructions, improvising as the action swirls past him. At times, you see him after the work has been done. One year, he is standing awkwardly alongside his two favorite players--all-Americans Scott May and Quinn Buckner, who are holding a championship trophy and wearing basketball nets around their necks--a big, goofy grin splitting his boyish face. Then, after another championship won in another place and time, he is riding on the shoulders of his jubilant players, his jaw set defiantly, his right index finger raised in triumph. So it is that Bobby Knight, who is so much of America, who embodies many of our strengths and a few of our weaknesses--and cherishes all of our values--has arrived at this Olympic summer as America's coach.

Chances are that if one American star emerges, it will not be a runner or a jumper or a swimmer or a boxer, as in so many Olympic games past; it will not be a bouncing blonde with dimples or a tough kid sprinting his way out of a ghetto. The most likely candidate as the games of Los Angeles approach is a basketball coach named Robert Montgomery Knight, 43, of Orrville, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana--and, mostly, the United States of America. Even without the participation of the Soviet bloc countries, this summer will be the opportunity of his lifetime.

Bobby Knight was born on October 25, 1940, in Massillon, Ohio, a town that has achieved fame for mass producing tough football players and coaches. He was raised in Orrville, another town in northern Ohio, by a father who worked on the railroad and a mother who taught school. He grew fast and tall and, after starring on the high school football, basketball and baseball teams, he accepted a basketball scholarship to Ohio State. The company there was formidable--it included John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas and Larry Siegfried, all of whom starred in the National Basketball Association--and Knight was the sixth man on teams that won 78 of 84 games and the 1960 National Collegiate Athletic Association championship.

Knight did not just idle away the time he spent on the bench. He studied the game and, after taking his history-and-government degree in 1962, was hired as a high school coach. A year later, he was drafted and was assigned to be the assistant basketball coach at West Point. Two years after that, when he was just 24, he was named head coach at West Point, a place of many traditions, including losing basketball teams.

While studying the game under some of its most inventive minds--including his three basketball mentors, Fred Taylor, his Ohio State coach; Pete Newell, who won a national championship at the University of California and an Olympic gold medal in 1960; and the late Clair Bee, who coached the great Long Island University teams of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties--Knight developed a reverence for most of basketball's traditions, though losing was not one of them.

He made that abundantly clear during his first season at West Point, when he won 18 games and the Cadets were invited to a post-season tournament. Knight worked at West Point five more seasons, accumulated a record of 102--50 and earned another three invitations to the National Invitation Tournament in Madison Square Garden. But he had accomplished about as much as he could with the limited talent available at Army, and in 1971, he moved to Indiana University, a school with a rich tradition of winning basketball.

In his 13 seasons at Indiana, Knight has matured from basketball's enfant terrible to its eminence grise, but many more things have not changed. His teams still play aggressive man-to-man defense and a controlled offense. But, mostly, they win. In 1976, the Hoosiers were 32--0 and won the N.C.A.A. title, and Knight became the first man to win a national championship as a player and then as a coach. In 1981, Indiana won another national championship, and this past season, the Hoosiers came within a basket of making the final four, though their talent pool had been depleted by injury and graduation. Many coaches and sportswriters said it was Knight's finest coaching job.

But championships and games won are not the only measures that distinguish Knight from the pack. They are simply the by-products of an iron will, a relentless search for basketball perfection and steadfast integrity; numbers and trophies only begin to tell the story of how this man who inspires loyalty and fervently returns the favor has become our Vince Lombardi for the Eighties.

During the 1981 final four, for example, Knight walked into a restaurant with some friends. While his party waited to be seated, a fan of an opposing team started to harass him. "Knight's an asshole! "Knight's an asshole!" the fan, who was standing at the bar, yelled repeatedly. Knight didn't want the other patrons of the restaurant to be disturbed on his account, so he took steps to remedy the situation: Although some witnesses say Knight pushed and the man stumbled, the fact is that the offending fan was stuffed--backside first--into a garbage can. And he made front-page news across the country.

He also made front-page news the last time he coached an American team in international competition, in 1979 in the Pan-American Games, which were played in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He became embroiled in a dispute with a policeman who was assigned to the practice gym. He and all the other American witnesses said the cop had provoked him and then started to push him, adding that Knight had merely brushed the cop's hand aside in self-defense. The cop alleged that Knight had attacked him. Knight left Puerto Rico before the court proceedings, during which he was tried in absentia for assault, convicted and sentenced to six months in jail. He didn't leave, however, before winning the gold medal and riding off defiantly on his players' shoulders.

Playboy assigned David Israel, who often covered Knight during stints as a newspaper columnist in Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, to spend time with the coach as he prepared for the Olympic games. Israel's report:

"The interviews with Knight were conducted over two one-week periods two months apart. The first week was spent in Bloomington, Indiana, in the middle of January, when the weather was really starting to chill and the Big Ten basketball season was starting to heat up. The second week was spent in Seattle during the last of March and the first of April, when four teams not coached by Knight were playing for the national championship.

"In Bloomington, the pace was hectic. During the season, Knight speeds along at a pace that is equally controlled and frantic. He always knows exactly what he wants to do, but he would also like to do everything at once. He is exceedingly organized--there is never, for instance, a pause during practice to decide what to do next, because every drill and its duration is written on an index card Knight keeps in his hip pocket. By the same token, there is never enough time in the day. Perhaps that is why, during the season, he sleeps too little and eats too much. The eating is often done on the run and almost always at crazy hours. At midnight after one game, a banquet of barbecued ribs and chicken that easily would have fed two dozen was devoured by Knight, four assistant coaches and a couple of guests while game films were watched. Three hours later, when everyone else had gone home, Knight was prowling about Bloomington looking for a place to have a chocolate sundae--he has an insatiable sweet tooth--and talk about fishing in Montana and Idaho during the summer. In January in Indiana, the interviews were conducted at breakneck speed at just about anyplace we could steal a moment and find some quiet.

"In Seattle, the pace was relaxed. The Indiana season had ended the week before, and Knight was taking it easy before embarking full time on his Olympic business. He was dining with old friends and colleagues, addressing a coaching clinic here, working an all-star-game telecast as color analyst there, enjoying the calm before the storm that was to come. Wherever we talked, however, the first order of business clearly had to be Olympic basketball."

[Q] Playboy: For a few weeks this summer, you're going to be called America's coach. Is being the Olympic coach something you've always wanted?

[A] Knight: I very much enjoy the opportunity to do it. I coached the Pan-American team in 1979, and at that time I was hopeful that I would coach the Olympic team, because it was going to play in Russia. I thought that would be a great challenge. But Dave Gavitt was chosen as the Olympic coach for 1980. Then in 1982, when this selection was made, I really wasn't attuned to the meetings. I knew they were going on, but I just hadn't paid a hell of a lot of attention. The appropriate committee had asked me to fill out a form to send in to be considered as an applicant, which I did. I was home one Saturday night and they called me and told me I'd been picked as the Olympic coach.

[Q] Playboy: Was one of the reasons you weren't paying attention to the selection process that you thought your chances had been diminished by what happened in Puerto Rico?

[A] Knight: Oh, I wasn't sure. No, I didn't know whether or not Puerto Rico had anything to do with it. I'd coached the Pan-American team, and I basically wasn't certain that someone who had coached that team would also be picked to coach the Olympic team. I really didn't think Puerto Rico had anything to do with it, because I thought that the people who were acquainted with the situation understood exactly what happened. That whole thing has never done anything but amaze me, because anybody who was there knew that what I said, and what our players said, was exactly the way it happened.

[Q] Playboy: Do you want to say what happened, once and for all?

[A] Knight: No. It was bullshit. It was more than four years ago; I have no desire to discuss that now. The only thing that I'll say about it is, very simply, that when I told my version, it was corroborated by every single American basketball player there. But people just didn't pay attention to that. And that gave me an insight into how little a lot of people in the press are really willing to look at and try to understand things.

[Q] Playboy: What did you conclude?

[A] Knight: I think the press basically jumps to a lot of its own conclusions. I enjoy reading about things that I know about personally to see how accurately they're reported. And I don't find that they are reported with any great deal of accuracy.

[Q] Playboy: Which was more to blame--the press or Puerto Rican justice?

[A] Knight: I don't want to talk about that. Don't try to get me into that. I have no interest in discussing that subject. Period.

[Q] Playboy: Do you wonder if it'll have any effect on your treatment in Los Angeles?

[A] Knight: No.

[Q] Playboy: Will it affect the way you're treated by other teams or how you're viewed by the public?

[A] Knight: I'm not coaching the other teams. As for the public, I got damned near 1000 letters after that thing, and all but 21 or 22 were very supportive. Let's talk about something else.

[Q] Playboy: All right. How important do you think it is that America win a gold medal in the Olympics?

[A] Knight: I think for America to win the gold medal in basketball is something that's simply accepted by people; it's the possibility of America's not winning the gold medal that's an issue. When the gold medal was stolen from us in 1972, I was down in Brazil and people there said, "Well, what happened to the United States? It's obviously not the best anymore." Those people had no idea who Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Willis Reed or John Havlicek was. They had no idea that we've got a whole league of players vastly superior to those playing anywhere else in the world and that we don't put in about six weeks and then go play. And so if we lose the medal, I think that has a great propaganda value for all kinds of people.

But winning it, I think, has a much greater effect here at home than it does abroad. You have such a tremendous following for basketball here in the United States--people follow college basketball and the pros--and for that two-week period in the summer, all of those basketball fans are going to be united as one giant group following one team instead of a lot of teams. All that support that usually goes to all those teams is going to be funneled right into one team. I think the enjoyment and the pride that all those people would get from the Americans' winning the gold medal in basketball would be the greatest satisfaction that I, as a coach, could have or that any one of our players could have.

[Q] Playboy: How much of a burden is this for you? You've come right out of a season in which you don't sleep, you eat poorly, and you always look forward to the last game of the year. Now it's as if you have to play an entire season again.

[A] Knight: But I'm going to do it only one time. Ever. For as long as I coach, this will be the only time that I do it. And I think enough of the opportunity, the responsibilities and the challenge to really not even think about it as something extra. It's just something that I'm really interested in, I really appreciate having the chance to do it, and I will simply do it as well as I can because of that.

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel about the U.S. boycott of the Olympics in 1980?

[A] Knight: I strongly opposed President Carter's decision not to send American athletes to Moscow. I felt that we were taking away one of our great strengths--showing people all over the world just how our kids compete, how hard they work on behalf of the United States. I thought it was an incredible mistake to do that.

[Q] Playboy: Does the hypocrisy of the Olympic eligibility rules disturb you? Other nations compete with veteran professional teams, but you are prohibited from using American professionals.

[A] Knight: I don't think there's any question that an incredible double standard exists. You used the word hypocrisy, and I'm sure that's applicable to the situation. The Italian national league is no less professional than our own N.B.A., yet players from the Italian league are all eligible to play on their respective Olympic teams. But I don't think about that. If that were a concern, I wouldn't be interested in the job. I think that we can get done what has to be done with the kids who are eligible and available to play, or I wouldn't have taken the job.

[Q] Playboy: The Olympics are a one-time thing, but hypocrisy and cheating are perpetual topics when it comes to big-time college sports in America. Starting with the issue of recruiting, why is there such widespread cheating?

[A] Knight: I really think that most problems are created by alumni who are unable to brag about their school's football and basketball teams. Some guy sits down and says, "I'm tired of our getting beat. I'm tired of not going to a bowl. Let's do something about this. Let's get some players. After all, that's what everybody else does. Hell, everybody's cheating and getting players. We'd better start cheating to get us some players."

[Q] Playboy:Is everybody cheating?

[A] Knight: I think there's an awful lot of it. I think that there's big money involved in getting good kids, football and basketball players, to go to college today. I mean large sums of money.

[Q] Playboy: What's big money? Digger Phelps, the Notre Dame coach, said he knew of players who were getting paid $10,000 a year.

[A] Knight: Well, I told Digger that he was thinking like a Catholic would--in terms of bingo when he should be thinking in terms of the craps table, because $10,000 wasn't going to touch how big it is.

[Q] Playboy: How big is it? How much can a good player make in a year in college basketball?

[A] Knight: I honestly can't tell you a sum. I've heard figures thrown off the wall that kids have gotten, over a four-year period of time, up to $100,000 to go to a school to play football or basketball.

[Q] Playboy: How do you handle it? If a kid tells you that another university has offered such and such and that without that help he won't be able to live a decent life, what do you tell him? How do you convince him he shouldn't accept that offer?

[A] Knight: All I'm going to say to him is, "Well, let me ask you something: Do you want to sell a piece of yourself or do you want to go to college for what you should legitimately go for? You have to make that decision. Somebody's going to own a part of you one day, but you're going to be independent the other way." If a kid tells me specifics about that other offer, then I'm immediately going to go to the N.C.A.A. and tell them exactly what I've been told, and then it's up to them to investigate it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you done that?

[A] Knight: With the kids who have told me that, yes. But I've had only a couple of kids come out with me and say, "Well, I would get this if I went to so and so."

[Q] Playboy: What was the result of the investigations?

[A] Knight: In one case, one of the schools was put on probation, but not for that particular kid.

[Q] Playboy: What school was it?

[A] Knight: North Carolina State a while back. The kid started asking me, "How many round trips home will your university provide me per year?" I went into a long, drawn-out discussion to finally get that out of him. It took me 15 minutes to get out of him what school was going to provide trips.

[Q] Playboy: North Carolina State is a school that served its time on probation for recruiting violations involving certain players, then won a national championship with some of those players. Did that gall you?

[A] Knight: Absolutely. Because my feeling about probation is, very simply, this: First of all, it's not just the school's fault and it's not just the alums' fault or the coach's or whoever is involved. It's the kid's fault. He knows what the hell the rules are. It's very rare that the kid doesn't know that. So my feeling is that you should not play basketball or football in any kind of postseason play with kids who were responsible for your school's going on probation. So when North Carolina State and Kentucky were put on probation, I felt those schools should have been denied the possibility of playing in the N.C.A.A. tournament until those kids had left school.

[Q] Playboy: What are the mechanics of cheating? If you were a coach who cheated, how would you do it?

[A] Knight: One time, I sat down and tried to figure it out. And here's a scheme that I came up with that I'm sure is typical of many things that are done.

I'd get ten alums to give $1000 to a roofing company. The roofer is an alum of my school, and he can submit some kind of bill to each of those ten alums, and then they pay it. So now the roofer has $10,000 to use. He hires a kid to work for him and can keep books on all kinds of fictitious overtime, so maybe over the course of a normal summer's employment, this kid could make $10,000 to $12,000. That seems pretty foolproof to me. The simplest thing in the world at a major university is to find ten guys willing to put $1000 apiece into something to ensure they'll have a good football or basketball team.

[Q] Playboy: And there's no way that the N.C.A.A. can trace that?

[A] Knight: I don't know. How the hell do I know? The N.C.A.A. is, I think, the most unfairly maligned organization in education today. We think of the N.C.A.A. as this monster that exists in Kansas City. All Kansas City is is an administrative body for the N.C.A.A. Any investigative body in the world needs the power of subpoena and the threat of prosecution to be successful. The N.C.A.A. has neither.

[Q] Playboy: So there is no effective way to stop anybody from cheating?

[A] Knight: That's exactly what I've said. One, I don't think anybody cares. Two, I'm not sure how the hell you can stop anyone, because the N.C.A.A. doesn't have the two powers it needs.

[Q] Playboy: Then what's the point of working against it constantly if you're just banging your head against the wall?

[A] Knight: Well, I just think there's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. I don't think that a kid learns anything by being given something. I think that here at Indiana, the scholarship the kid gets, the opportunities he has as a basketball player and what the experience is going to mean to him after he graduates are enough. He doesn't need to be given $100 a month. If he wants $100 a month, then he should make it in the summer and put it in a checking account and withdraw from it every month. As a coach, I would get no satisfaction whatsoever out of seeing my team beat somebody knowing that I was paying those guys, that they hadn't come to Indiana because that was where they wanted to play. Now, obviously, some people don't give a damn about that. But that happens to mean a lot to me. I want to see our team win as much as anybody wants to see his team win, but there are certain principles that I think should be followed to get there.

[Q] Playboy: One of your principles is that your players must get educated. That doesn't necessarily happen elsewhere; most college basketball players don't graduate. What should be done about that?

[A] Knight: I've suggested for years--and no one has paid the slightest attention to this--that a scholarship be replaced only because the kid who had it got a degree. And if he didn't get one--let's say you even give the kid an extra year to get that degree--then the school loses a scholarship for a year or for two years or whatever. But nobody wants to pay any attention to that. Nobody yet has and nobody will.

[Q] Playboy: Does all the cheating that goes on ever make you ashamed of being in the business that you're in?

[A] Knight: No, I'm not ashamed of it, because the only part of it that I'm really concerned with is the part that I run: basketball at Indiana. I'm not concerned about other sports at Indiana. I'm not concerned about basketball at other schools. I've just made up my mind that what I'm concerned about is basketball at Indiana. In terms of education, in terms of what I think is right and wrong, I'm certainly not ashamed. I'm very proud of what we have done here.

[Q] Playboy: How do you see the situation changing? If you were to guess what college sports would be like in the year 2000, what would you say?

[A] Knight: Well, you'd just have to allow for inflation and add that to cheating, just like you add it to everything else. We won't change.

[Q] Playboy: What you're calling for is an honesty that doesn't exist anymore. Where did you get your sense of values?

[A] Knight: My dad was the most honest person I've ever known. He never bought a thing, except the house, that he didn't pay for with the money he had in his pocket. And I don't think he ever made more than $8000 a year. If he didn't have money in his pocket to buy a car or a suit, a meal, a piece of furniture, he didn't buy it. My dad lived until I was 29 years old, and in those 29 years he owned three cars. I've never known anybody like him. A lot of people didn't agree with him. He had a tough time ever leaving a tip for anybody, because he always said, "Nobody ever gave me a tip for doing anything. I get paid like everybody else does." Which always kind of tickled me. Through him, I've always felt that you've got to have rules. I think the next biggest influence on me personally in that regard would be Fred Taylor.

[Q] Playboy: Your basketball coach at Ohio State.

[A] Knight: Yeah. I was a very average player at Ohio State, and I didn't get anything for doing anything. I don't think anybody else did, either. Taylor maintained an incredible honesty in his approach to recruiting and playing and everything else for the entire 17 years he was head coach there.

[Q] Playboy: When you played at Ohio State, your team won a national championship. Were the rules broken as widely then?

[A] Knight: I don't think that recruiting was nearly as big an issue as it is now. I don't think that people went all over the country recruiting. The first highly organized, effective recruiter was Vic Bubas of Duke. He did it, I think, on a very honest basis. He lit the fuse that exploded recruiting, because he went out and recruited good kids and recruited them honestly. Yet, in a way, he created a monster.

[Q] Playboy: Staying with your own sports history for a moment, did your father push you into sports?

[A] Knight: No. He was neutral. He always went to see us play. He went to see me play a lot in college and saw us play whenever he could when I was coaching. He thought it was funny that I went into the Army to go to West Point as assistant basketball coach. He couldn't understand that. First of all, he couldn't understand why the hell you would go to college to be a coach. He didn't think you needed a college education to coach--never could comprehend that. But when I told him I was going to join the Army to coach at West Point, he really thought then he'd raised an idiot.

[Q] Playboy: What did it mean to you to go to West Point?

[A] Knight: I really looked forward to it. I had enjoyed reading military history and I ended up majoring in history in college, and what more historical institution than West Point is there in America? The whole idea of what West Point stood for had a special interest to me, and as I stayed there, my feelings about it became stronger and stronger. West Point is an absolutely outstanding institutional concept. Just like anywhere else, I encountered some people there who were inept and had no business being in the positions they were in. But as an institution, it's second to none.

[Q] Playboy: You went there as assistant coach, as an enlisted man in the Army.

[A] Knight: As a Pfc. Ninety dollars a month--$89, to be exact.

[Q] Playboy: It didn't take you long to become head coach, did it? It was within two years, when you were 24.

[A] Knight: Yeah. And I had two months to go in the Army. I was still a Pfc. when I became the head coach.

[Q] Playboy: Why would West Point make a 24-year-old kid head coach?

[A] Knight: I was cheap. They couldn't get anybody any cheaper than I was.

[Q] Playboy: When you were offered the job, did you say, "Wait a minute; I'm 24 years old. Maybe I'm not ready for this"?

[A] Knight: No, I didn't think that.

[Q] Playboy: You had never had any doubts about it?

[A] Knight: I felt that I had played four years in a system at Ohio State that was set up by as good a coach as there was in the country, and I had had the opportunity to work for a year in high school for an outstanding coach. So my age never really concerned me. I didn't know a hell of a lot about basketball, but I knew how I thought the game should be played, and I knew that I could coach it the way I thought it should be played. So, no, I was never concerned with that.

[Q] Playboy: Did the period you were at West Point coincide with the antiwar protests?

[A] Knight: Oh, yeah, this was one of the greatest things I'd ever seen: We had a kid--the all-time-toughest kid who ever played college basketball--Mike Gyovai. He was from Aurora, Illinois. We're playing up at Syracuse and some students have just taken over the R.O.T.C. building, where they're demonstrating against the military. And here we come in and play. We just beat the hell out of Syracuse in this particular game. And the students are on us. They're throwing nuts and bolts out of the stands. The sports-information director at Army, Bob Kinney, still has a long bolt that was thrown down right beside him when he was sitting at the scorer's table during the game. He keeps it on his desk to this day. Anyway, Gyovai comes out of the game with a couple of minutes to play and he's at the opposite end of the floor from our bench. Now, Gyovai was 6'5', 225, and he looked like he weighed about 190 solid. And I can remember to this day his walking over to the side line in front of all these taunting Syracuse students, from the end of the court right to our bench, just as slow as he possibly could walk. I turn to a great friend of mine, Colonel Tom Rogers, our officer representative, and I say, "Can you believe the son of a bitch? He's going to start World War Three right here." He was just going to dare somebody to say anything to him. No one did. I'll tell you one thing: If we ever do have World War Three, they better find things for him to attack, because there isn't anybody gonna beat him.

[Q] Playboy: The military has obviously influenced your thinking as a coach and as a man. Whom do you admire? Patton?

[A] Knight: Patton had an incredible ability to see what he had to do and how to do it. But I think he was pompous beyond what his position called for. MacArthur was also an incredibly arrogant, pompous guy. Yet he engaged more enemy troops with fewer casualties than any other military commander in history. That, to me, is the mark of a great general. But I think my choice as the greatest military commander of all is Ulysses S. Grant.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Knight: Because Grant wore the uniform of a private. He had no self-interest at all. He never tried to promote himself in any way. He felt he was a soldier given a job to do, a distasteful job, and that was to get the war over as quickly as he could. That was his only objective. Grant had a far broader understanding of the war than anybody else who had ever been in the military. When he went to Washington to assume command of the Union armies, he went with his son; through a mix-up, nobody was there to meet him at the train. He went to Willard's hotel and simply registered as U. S. Grant and son. You know, a guy like Patton or MacArthur would have been met by jeeps and tanks and airplanes and paraded down Constitution Avenue and everything else. I've done a lot of reading about Grant in the past three or four years. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist, and he did it with a great style. I'm a tremendous admirer of Patton's, but I admire him because of his ability to grasp what he was confronted with and then beat it.

[Q] Playboy: How do those qualities apply to coaching basketball?

[A] Knight: I honestly feel that as I have read about Grant, I have tried to become more low-keyed in my approach to things, to stay the hell out of them, to be more removed from them.

[Q] Playboy: How have you become more low-keyed?

[A] Knight: Oh, when somebody asked a question at a press conference, I might have said, "That is the dumbest goddamn question I've ever heard," and now I might simply say, "Oh, I don't know; has anybody else got a question?"

[Q] Playboy: Don't you think that analogies between sports and military can be----

[A] Knight: Overworked? Yeah, sometimes. Take the idea of winning and losing. You don't want to be second in a war. I mean, you're not preparing for next year's war. I think the best analogies that can be made are the command-decision analogies between commanders and coaches. Coaches can learn a lot just by studying examples of indecisiveness or timidity. Most military commanders are timid. The great ones haven't necessarily been the most brilliant. They're the ones who are the most aggressive and are willing to go after things.

[Q] Playboy: Which is a quality most people would associate with Patton--or you.

[A] Knight: People take Patton--a tough, demanding, rugged individualist--and they equate him with me. Well, that's not the part of Patton that I try to imitate. The part of him I admire is the way he recognized opportunities and developed strategies--we'll use this road because it takes us here and that one can't--and the way he was willing to get down in the mud and direct tanks. But my most severe criticism of Patton would be that he was too interested in his own image as a military commander at the sacrifice of people. And I mean lives. My basic idea is let's live and fight tomorrow. I think Patton fell short in that category. He sent 250, 300 people on an almost suicidal mission to free his son-in-law from a prison camp during World War Two. MacArthur, despite his greatness, could be just as self-absorbed. I don't know whether or not this is really true, but in the movie MacArthur, he was upset about the atomic bomb's being used in Japan because it deprived the American Army and himself of the glory of an invasion of Japan, which would have been war as he thought war should be fought. But how many millions of American lives did Harry Truman save? Truman may be the greatest American who ever lived. He once wrote a letter to his brother in which he said, "I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell. Sincerely, Harry." [Laughs] That's the way the guy operated.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you remember that letter verbatim? Did you study it?

[A] Knight: I study what I think is right and what I think is the way to do something. Some guy who writes about it or watches it from the stands hasn't studied it. I've studied. And if it turns out to be wrong, then I'm going to re-evaluate it and make the decision differently the next time. Themistocles was asked, I think, "Would you rather be a writer or a participant in the Olympics?" And his response was "Far better to be the doer of deeds than the chronicler of them."

[Q] Playboy: On occasion.

[A] Knight: I'm not using that as a comparison to writing or journalism. I'm just saying that I'm usually sure my decision is right because I've studied it and the other guy hasn't.

[Q] Playboy: Do you always think you've done the right thing?

[A] Knight: No.

[Q] Playboy: What are examples of things you think you were wrong about?

[A] Knight: Well, it might be something I've said to somebody and then, in retrospect, I've thought that wasn't the thing to say under the circumstances. It might be the way I've handled something or gotten irritated or upset.

[Q] Playboy: But you don't often apologize in public.

[A] Knight: Guys who apologize for things in public always amaze me. When I read how somebody apologized publicly for something, I never think there's much sincerity in that. Or when I read that somebody has donated $10,000--I've donated a hell of a lot of money to things and nobody knows anything about them and nobody ever will know about them. I just think that the things that you do privately are much more meaningful.

[Q] Playboy: You may be the most famous person in Indiana--more famous than the governor or the Senators. Do you think there's something wrong with a society that elevates a college coach to that level, or is it understandable?

[A] Knight: You don't have an entire daily section of the newspaper devoted to medicine or education, but you've got an entire section of every daily newspaper devoted to sports. And, particularly when one team is successful, be it in football or basketball, the one person who usually remains with the team is the coach. But there is a difference between being well known and being looked upon as something that you aren't. I think that you have to understand why you're as well known as you are. I'm as well known as I am because I've had a hell of a lot of basketball players who played pretty well. I look upon that as simply an appreciation for Indiana University basketball.

[Q] Playboy: Beyond that, what do you think people see in you?

[A] Knight: I think people can look at me and if they cut it to the absolute simplest form possible, they'll tell you one thing: The son of a bitch is honest. I think people have an appreciation for someone who says what he thinks. I think they know that I make mistakes but try to do what's right. At least I hope so. The people at Indiana have been very good to me. Indiana has been a great place for me to be.

[Q] Playboy: The university or the state?

[A] Knight: The university and the state.

[Q] Playboy: What effect has your intense fame had on your family?

[A] Knight: I've always tried to keep my family completely removed from it. I've tried to teach my two boys that they have no special privileges whatsoever because somebody associates them with Indiana basketball. I've tried to keep them out of as much as I can. I've never allowed stories to be written about my family or my family to be interviewed by anybody. As any father would, I let them receive some benefit from what I do, such as being around the team. From the age of six, Tim carried water and towels and wiped up, and so did Patrick. But if they want to be there, they gotta get their ass in gear, like everybody else.

[Q] Playboy: Let's focus on your work. What is the day of a game like?

[A] Knight: Well, the game day has gotten more difficult for me, as more is expected from the team. We've gotten to a point where we're expected to win a lot, so we're trying to live up to that expectation. Losing games that are close is much harder on me now than it was before. Before, I would just say, "We've got to work harder, we've got to do something better." Now I tend to reflect on what we have done. What should we have done? What didn't we do? Ah, I have a much tougher time than I did before handling games we lose that we might have won.

Game day--I used to have a kind of set routine. Now, a lot of times, I do things differently. We had our last game of the regular season with Ohio State. Johnny Bench came to watch the game, and instead of sitting there for two hours, thinking and planning, as I used to, I took him to the lake where I do a lot of fishing. Then we went back for the game. I'd never have done that a few years ago.

[Q] Playboy: Getting to the game itself, give us a coach's perspective. What are the things that you need to see during a game to coach efficiently?

[A] Knight: Well, I've got to see if what we have set up defensively is being followed through. That's number one. Number two, is what we're doing defensively sufficient to contain their offense? Then, offensively, are we getting good shots? Are we having trouble getting good shots? Are our people moving without the basketball? I try to look at what we're doing in terms of what we've set up for this particular game. Then I try to be ready for any changes that the other team might make; ideally, we've anticipated some of them and we can adjust to the changes that they make.

[Q] Playboy: What's likely to make you jump out of your chair during a game?

[A] Knight: Defensively, when a player doesn't recognize where the ball is; when he misses something because he didn't know where the ball was, which is paramount. That's one thing. A second thing is missing a block-out. The third thing is not moving--to help out or to impede the progress of the ball.

As for offense, ours is very subtle in its development and movement. I think it is a difficult offense, so it's harder for me to always see what's going on. Often, I have to study the film to know what's happened, so I'm less likely to jump off the seat.

[Q] Playboy: In terms of motivating a team, or in terms of your own expectations, what do you set as a goal at the beginning of a season?

[A] Knight: Well, next season, my initial thing will be, "All right, at one point in this season, 280 teams are going to be reduced to 64, and your goal is to be one of those 64 teams." I've mentioned that on the first day of practice every year that I've been in Indiana. Along with that, we want to win the Big Ten championship. We start talking about that the very first day that we get together, those two goals.

[Q] Playboy: No more than that? You don't strive for the national championship?

[A] Knight: No, because most teams aren't capable of doing that. I totally disagree with the guy who says, "Well, our objective is to win every game; our objective is to be a national champion." I've been there. And I've had teams that win every game, and I know how hard that is, and there are very few teams that can do it. I'm not a believer in striving for the impossible. No, I'm a believer in being very realistic about what you can and cannot do, and then trying to achieve what you realistically can achieve.

[Q] Playboy: But was it realistic in 1976--with that team--to expect that you could win the national championship?

[A] Knight: Exactly. I told the team on the first day of practice of the 1975--1976 season that nothing less than the national championship would be satisfactory. The rest of it was all just a means for us to get there. We had to play a schedule; we had to go the first day of practice. I knew that team was the best team in the country. In fact, that was one of the best teams I've ever seen play college basketball.

[Q] Playboy: Was 1976 different from 1981, when you also won the championship?

[A] Knight: Yeah, but only because we'd started out badly in 1981 and we'd had to get some players straightened around. But I thought that we were the best team in the country at the end of that year.

[Q] Playboy: What are the best teams you've ever seen play college basketball?

[A] Knight: Oh, I think that Ohio State '60 team, and a couple of those UCLA teams, and that 1976 Indiana team, and probably the '56 San Francisco team, but I didn't see it play.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a number of games won--a percentage--that constitutes a measure of success for you?

[A] Knight: No. I've never thought of it in those terms. Winning 20 games isn't it. Winning the league championship isn't it. It's being able to take a given season and look at it and see if we did as well as I thought we could.

[Q] Playboy: Last season, you reached the final eight of the N.C.A.A. tournament with a team that was relatively inexperienced and was hampered by injuries. Was that a successful season?

[A] Knight: In the context of accomplishing what we had tried to accomplish in terms of goals, it was. However, over the course of the season, we had several opportunities that we did not make the most of--maybe four times. When I think of those things, the season wasn't successful. And as we go into a new season, that's what I'll have to change if this team's going to grow.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if you go through life in a constant state of dissatisfaction.

[A] Knight: No, I don't think so. I don't attach the same process of evaluation to other things that I do to coaching basketball. If I go to a restaurant and order dinner and it's lousy, that doesn't spoil my evening. It's just a lousy dinner, so I don't eat it. Let's get on with what else we're going to do. But if we go to a basketball game and play a lousy game--yes, that spoils my evening.

[Q] Playboy: For a lot of people, college basketball means color and pageantry; the game is part of a larger spectacle. Do you notice cheerleaders and bands?

[A] Knight: I think I notice the big picture. The cheerleaders have enthusiasm. But one of the great distractions of professional sports are the bump-and-grind girls they have. I think they detract immensely from the sport. There's no real enthusiasm there. It's like we're selling a picture of a naked gal on the cover of the Methodist hymnal.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying sports is religion?

[A] Knight: No, I'm just saying that religion stands in its own right, just as professional sports should. What the hell do you need sex for to see professional sports? I think that's demeaning to the sport. If I were involved in a professional franchise, the first thing I'd do is fire the girls. But there's a bouncy enthusiasm about bands and cheerleaders that I really enjoy.

[Q] Playboy: During the game, are you aware of the crowd--whether it's for you or against you?

[A] Knight: No, I don't think so. I've tried to adopt an attitude since the very beginning that you can't be more relaxed at home or more tense on the road because of the crowd. You've got to reach a point equidistant between the two, so you play consistently no matter where you are. As long as I've coached, I haven't been very conscious of crowds--even at home, where we've had some great crowds that have been spontaneous beyond belief. I think maybe when a game's over I might say, "Our crowd was pretty good today" or "We had a bad crowd today," but that's all.

[Q] Playboy: There's no subliminal response during the game?

[A] Knight: No, I really don't think so. When I first had to do public speaking, I learned to talk over the top of everybody's head--you know, instead of looking right at a person. If you do that, you can lose concentration. You know, if you happen to look at some good-looking girl sitting there [laughs] or a friend of yours, it can really break your concentration. So, I found very quickly that it didn't bother me to get up in public; it was almost as though I were talking to myself instead of: My God! There's 1000 people out there! And I think that's kind of the way that I've always thought about crowds in basketball. Whether it's 20,000 or whatever the hell it is, I'm just looking at the game, not what's going on around it.

[Q] Playboy: You're so animated during the game, people assume that a lot of what you do is intentional--designed to deflect attention from the players onto you to take pressure off them.

[A] Knight: I don't think I've ever done anything like that. My whole theory of coaching and the physical presence that I have at a game is directed toward the game; toward encouraging a player, toward chastising him, whatever it might be. But it has no bearing at all on how I think the crowd might react. I think you would find, if there were some way that you could study it, that I'm no different at home or on the road insofar as my actions are concerned. And I'm really not much different in games where we're ahead or behind or close or whatever.

[Q] Playboy: So you're denying that any part of coaching is a performance art?

[A] Knight: Unless it's subconscious. I have never consciously tried to do anything like that. Some of my players may have said they think their coach distracts the crowd from them; if so, that's something that just happens. I can remember only one time ever consciously trying to stage something: It was my first year at Indiana, and I was trying to get a technical foul----

[Q] Playboy: You had to try to get a technical foul?

[A] Knight: And the guy just refused to give it to me and I said to hell with that, that's the last time----

[Q] Playboy: What did you do?

[A] Knight: Oh, I was out screaming and hollering, because I thought maybe it would get everybody going. It was such a ridiculous thing that I never made that attempt again. Any technical that I've gotten, I've gotten because of the spontaneity of the situation. I'm sure that I have reacted by not caring whether or not I got a technical foul. You know, I may have thought the mistake was so severe that, damn it, I was going to say what the hell I thought no matter what.

[Q] Playboy: Billy Packer, the CBS announcer, said that you work the officials, that you set up an official in the first half for something you're going to want in the second half.

[A] Knight: Let me tell you what I think about that: I think that's just so much bullshit; it gives a broadcaster a chance to talk about something. When I get on an official, it's because I think he's doing a lousy job. I don't have time to sit there and figure out how I can "work" an official. I've never done that. I have had games where I thought we had a poor official or a weak official, and I wanted to make damn sure he didn't go to sleep or that he was aware of what the hell he was doing. And, as a game progresses, I'm not going to sit there and say nothing about bad calls.

I figure this about officiating: I don't think there's an official in the country who knows as much about basketball as I do. Not even close. Or as much as any other coach knows. And when I've got a complaint, I want it listened to. I've seen an official not watch for traveling; I've seen him watch the flight of the ball instead of the shooter's hand afterward--whether or not he gets hit. I think that basketball officiating is tough, but I don't think there are very many officials who know how to watch logically from one to two to three to four to five in a given position on the floor. And when I see somebody violate the logical progression of what he should be looking for, then I'm going to let him know about it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever feel bad about causing a guy embarrassment or berating him too much?

[A] Knight: If I've made a mistake, I have said so a number of times.

[Q] Playboy: Because of your knowledge of the game, and your record, you have been called a genius. How do you react to that?

[A] Knight: I'm not sure what a genius is. I once heard a guy describe a genius as a queer who can whistle while he works.

[Q] Playboy: What else might a genius be?

[A] Knight: I don't know. I don't know what your definition is. I would think that it would have to be a guy who is able to do things mentally that other people are really incapable of doing, and in that context, I am absolutely not a genius. I would not qualify in any way for it. I'm not able to do things mathematically; the sciences, chemistry, physics are like foreign languages to me.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps people who are geniuses in those fields would find it impossible to analyze the movements of ten rather large people in a confined area----

[A] Knight: I don't think it takes a genius to do that. I don't think that's a word that's applicable to coaching.

[Q] Playboy: What word would apply?

[A] Knight: Studious, flexible, analytical. But not genius.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever wonder how you would have done if you had devoted yourself to some other field?

[A] Knight: I don't know. This may be the only thing in the world I can do.

[Q] Playboy: For someone of your intelligence, is there any continuing challenge in trying to win basketball games? Do you ever wonder what you're doing devoting your life to this one game?

[A] Knight: Well, I don't know. I really enjoy the idea of being able to do what I want to do a lot of the time, and coaching basketball permits that. I enjoy being able to go to Montana in the summer and spend a month fishing by myself, with a friend or with one of my kids. I enjoy having a job where I'm expected to do something, and as long as I do it, nobody cares when I'm there or how often. I think basketball simply affords me an opportunity to do the things I like to do other than basketball--and I think that's why I do it. Besides, as I said, I don't know whether I'd be any good at anything else. It seems I've been fairly good at this, so I keep doing it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you crave victory?

[A] Knight: No, what I have is a great desire for excellence, and it doesn't include victory. Winning is a by-product of playing well. On the other hand, I have a very, very low level of tolerance for anything that isn't good in terms of our play.

[Q] Playboy: But to press you on an earlier question, do you ever wonder what it matters, in the larger scheme of things, if 12 guys who happen to be on the Indiana basketball team play well?

[A] Knight: Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all, except I'm in charge of those 12 guys and it matters a hell of a lot to me. I mean, what I care about is what I'm in charge of, and they've placed me in charge of coaching basketball at Indiana, so, damn it, we're going to play it as well as we can play it. And I don't think I've ever lost perspective that this has to mean something to the kid, far beyond how many points he scored or how many rebounds he got. But if you were to check over the kids who have played for me over the years, there aren't any of them on relief anywhere, and there aren't any of them as social burdens anywhere, and there aren't any of them who don't have good jobs. I mean, they've done extraordinarily well.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever think that you might want to use your ability to lead and influence people to something bigger, such as politics?

[A] Knight: At one time, I thought I might like to go into politics, but what I would like to be is appointed to a job and not have to run for it. I don't want any obligations. You know, I want somebody to say, "All right, we're going to appoint you the United States Senator from Indiana." I don't want to go through all the garbage of elections.

[Q] Playboy: But as an appointed Senator, what would you do if you had to be on the Senate floor for an early vote--even though that is when you usually fish?

[A] Knight: See, that's why I am content with what I'm doing. I've never, never said I thought there was something bigger, or broader, on the horizon for me. How long I'll coach, I don't know. But once I quit coaching, I'll continue to live just as I do.

[Q] Playboy: And if you never have another intellectual challenge that's satisfying?

[A] Knight: I don't need intellectual challenges. I really don't. I have an intellectual challenge in deciding what fly I should use this afternoon on the river. Now, that's a challenge that exists only between me and the fish, and not another soul knows about it; but if I walk off the river figuring I whipped that challenge, then I feel pretty good.

[Q] Playboy: In 1981, you almost quit; you were close to being burned out. You even considered leaving Indiana to work for CBS.

[A] Knight: I think that you're wrong about that. I don't think that I've ever been close to being burned out. I've seen that phrase bandied about by coaches and people in the business, and I'm not sure exactly what it means. The only thing that I did was give serious consideration to going into the television end of basketball, because it would allow me to do something different. It was still an association with college basketball, only going about it in a different way.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you do it? What changed your mind?

[A] Knight: I had a long talk with Ara Parseghian. He's a guy for whom I have tremendous respect. He told me that he thought I should quit coaching first, not quit coaching to do something else. He said that I should quit, sit around and see what I wanted to do, then go do it, because that would be the only way I would know that I'd truly had enough of coaching.

[Q] Playboy: In other words, it was a matter of being interested in the potential television job; you weren't tired of coaching.

[A] Knight: The job really intrigued me. It would have been an excellent time for me to get out of coaching, if that's what I wanted to do, because we'd just won the N.C.A.A. championship and things were in pretty good shape. We had good players coming back. It was going to be a good team the next year for whoever took over. I didn't have any qualms about leaving because of that. But I changed my mind.

[Q] Playboy: Television pays nicely, but so does coaching. It's said that Eddie Sutton at Arkansas makes $1,000,000 a year. Compared with the rest of the faculty, are college coaches overpaid?

[A] Knight: When we look at a total university structure, the job with the least security of all is either the football coach's or the basketball coach's. In very few cases does either have tenure. He has to win. You don't have to produce X number of A students if you're a chemistry professor. You don't have to produce a Rhodes scholar every five years if you're an English-literature professor. There aren't any requirements there. But a coach is paid to win. I mean, you can cut it any way you want it. You can talk about athletics and all the altruistic motives that we can attach to athletic participation--and there are a lot. But purely from a standpoint of retaining his job, a coach is going to do it if he wins. And because of that pressure, because of what a successful team means to a university in terms of fund raising and alumni involvement, a coach is worth what he's paid. I've told our people that I'd love the 15 percent each year of what basketball takes in over and above what it was taking in when I came here.

[Q] Playboy: What would that amount to?

[A] Knight: It would amount to enough so you wouldn't have to write anymore and I wouldn't have to coach anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Are we talking about millions a year?

[A] Knight: Yeah. We're talking about a lot of money. Television revenue. When I came to Indiana, we were getting $2000 a game. Now we're getting about $18,000 a game, plus all the other national-TV games and everything else that we have. We were averaging about 6000 people per game and now we're selling about 17,000 tickets per game. I mean, it's astronomical.

[Q] Playboy: All right: Besides being a nice business, what is coaching?

[A] Knight: Coaching is motivation. Coaching is leadership. Coaching is, are you going to get the guys to attack the river? Some of them are going to get killed, but we got to go attack the river. So I've got to figure out how to get them to do that. Coaching is basically understanding human nature. Human nature is, very simply, this: Human nature--for you, for me, for anybody--dictates to us that we do what we have to to get by. So we got to beat human nature's ass, first of all. We got to go beyond just getting by. And if we can do that, then we got a chance to be successful as a team. So I got to understand that.

Then the next thing I got to do is get these players to play harder than they think they can play. I got to get them to work harder than they think they can work. John Ritter, who played on my first team at Indiana, said something about my approach to coaching that will never be topped. He said, "Well, Bobby Knight just gets us to play better than we ever thought we could play." I could never have anything nicer said about what I'm trying to do. And in any leadership role, you're trying to get people to be better than they think they can be. You're trying to get people to work harder than they ever thought they could work. You're trying to get people to reach within themselves. Leadership. You're trying to get a guy to do something he doesn't want to do--and to do it well. That's what leadership is.

[Q] Playboy: What doesn't a person want to do on a basketball court?

[A] Knight: Dive onto the floor for a loose ball. Get down in a defensive stance and just scratch and scramble and work like hell to keep the guy from getting the basketball. Block out on every shot. Take nothing but good shots. Make good passes. There are all kinds of things guys don't want to do.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most fulfilling thing about the job? You've said it's not winning games.

[A] Knight: No. Who cares about that? If you do what you have to do and do it right, you're going to win. The single most fulfilling thing about coaching has been kids who have played for us coming back to watch us play again. There isn't anything that pleases me more than to look into the stands before a game and see one of our former players there.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Knight: Because it's got to have meant something to him if he's coming back to watch us play. Now, that doesn't happen a lot of places.

[Q] Playboy: Is that something you consciously strive for?

[A] Knight: Well, I encourage them to come back. We try to make them feel they're always a part of the team. And if you take the time to notice in our locker room--as Sherlock Holmes once told Watson, "Everybody sees but few perceive"----

[Q] Playboy: We saw: You have the names of all your former players on plaques in the lockers they used.

[A] Knight: You're one of those few assholes Sherlock Holmes was talking about who perceive.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the toughest issue in professional sports today: Do you understand what all the drug abuse is about?

[A] Knight: I think I may understand what's going on through players I played with or against--far longer than anybody. I remember once we had a representative from an N.B.A. office come into a Big Ten meeting. Just off the top of my head, I'd say it was five years ago. The guy started talking about how there was no drug problem in the N.B.A., that they policed it. I got up and walked out. Wayne Duke [the Big Ten commissioner] asked me where I was going, and I said, "I'm not going to sit here and listen to that idiot insult our intelligence about the lack of a drug problem in the N.B.A." Each coach had brought two players with him, and instead of standing up and telling those kids what the hell it was all about, what really happens, giving them examples of how many guys screwed up their careers because of drugs, this idiot was up there telling us there was no drug problem. I said, "I don't need this. I'll be back when he's done."

[Q] Playboy: So do you understand why drug abuse is so widespread?

[A] Knight: I think that what you have, very simply, is players having too much money and too much time. It becomes a social thing and a status thing. Money is a problem for most people who want to purchase drugs. It's not a problem for the professional basketball player.

[Q] Playboy: But do you think it's as detrimental and as terrible----

[A] Knight: Absolutely. There isn't anything good about it. There isn't anything that should be tolerated about it. I'd like to be in charge of drug administration for about a month.

[Q] Playboy: What would you do?

[A] Knight: Well, I would be tough. Let's just leave it at that.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to be head of the Drug Enforcement Administration?

[A] Knight: For about a month.

[Q] Playboy: What would you do?

[A] Knight: I would go at trying to wipe the thing out. I wouldn't stop boats; I'd sink them. I mean, I'd do a lot of things first and ask questions later.

[Q] Playboy: If you were running the N.B.A., what would you do about drug users?

[A] Knight: I think that there are situations where the first thing you try to do is cure the problem. It can be treated as an illness like any other. Alcohol abuse is an illness. Drug abuse is an illness. As to involvement in anything other than use--such as possession with intent to distribute any drug in any way--if it were up to me, the player would be disbarred for life from playing in the N.B.A.

[Q] Playboy: Have you personally ever tried a drug to see what it was?

[A] Knight: No, no.

[Q] Playboy: Not even in college?

[A] Knight: Never, like in capital fucking never!

[Q] Playboy: Why have things changed? Do you feel today's players are different from those in your day?

[A] Knight: No, I don't think so. Drugs just weren't available then. Alcohol was available. I think as many players had problems with alcohol then as have problems with drugs today. Drugs in this generation are just a substitute for the alcoholism when I was growing up.

[Q] Playboy: Apart from drugs, do you find athletes today any different from the athletes of 15 or 20 years ago?

[A] Knight: No. But I think that the coaches and the adults are different. I think the people in charge of athletes have changed. Athletes under the right direction are willing to work as hard, put as much effort forth, as they ever were. But the people who administer the athletes are less demanding. Teachers as a whole have changed--the scope of education is far less demanding today than it was 20 years ago--and that's a tragic mistake.

[Q] Playboy: Why did it happen?

[A] Knight: If I holler and shout at you, chances are you're going to back down. So when kids hollered and shouted, administrations backed down instead of throwing them the hell out of school. Most people want to avoid conflict. People for centuries have been able to bully and buffalo their way through things simply by hollering and shouting. So many times, we acquiesced to student demands--to the point where you don't have to attend class today. You can dress any way you want to when you come to class. I teach one class and I tell them on the first day that if they want to wear a hat, they'd better not wear it in there. If they want to go barefoot, don't do it in my class. You don't wear shoes, you don't get in the classroom. You cut one class, it's a C. You cut two classes, it's failure.

[Q] Playboy: Which class?

[A] Knight: I teach a course in coaching. And I say, "Don't tell me about university regulations, because we go by my regulations here." And if the university doesn't like those regulations, it can tell me not to teach the course.

[Q] Playboy: How many students are in your class?

[A] Knight: Oh, I've had up to 100 and down to 50.

[Q] Playboy: How many fail?

[A] Knight: I don't think anybody fails. People cut class, they drop it. They drop out before they can fail. They could all get A's as far as I'm concerned.

[Q] Playboy: We talked earlier about your military heroes. Who are your sports heroes?

[A] Knight: Ted Williams.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Knight: Because of a lot of things. Williams said that his goal in life was to walk down the street and hear somebody say, "There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived." And he just worked at that. And I doubt if anyone else in athletics has ever taken one thing and worked as hard at it as Williams did. Now, Williams is a guy who's got great hand--eye coordination. If I'm not mistaken, he still has one of the highest, if not the highest, visual scores ever recorded on the Naval Aviation physical exam. And Williams was his own man. He went about doing his thing the best way he could do it, the way he understood it best. He was also a great philanthropist when he played with the Red Sox. I've had guys tell me all kinds of stories about things that Williams did that he never wanted anybody else to know about. But he was crucified by the press for all kinds of things by people who really didn't know what he was like.

[Q] Playboy: When you, like Ted Williams, walk down the street in five or ten years, what do you want people to say about you?

[A] Knight: Well, a friend of mine, John Flynn, once asked me, "What do you want as an epitaph?" And I said I'd be very happy if they cut on my tombstone: he was honest and he didn't kiss anybody's ass.

"For two weeks in the summer, all basketball fans are going to be united as one group following one team."

"I've heard kids have gotten up to $100,000 to go to a school to play football or basketball."

"I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. I don't think a kid learns anything by being given something."

"Coaches can learn a lot by studying examples of indecisiveness or timidity. Most military commanders are timid."

"I'm as well known as I am only because I've had a hell of a lot of basketball players who played pretty well."

"One of the great distractions of professional sports are the bump-and-grind girls. There's no real enthusiasm there."