In a "rambling 22-minute diatribe" yesterday, IN Univ.
men's basketball coach Bobby Knight "defended himself" after
a CNN/SI report quoted two former players as saying that
Knight verbally and physically abused them. Knight: "In the
time I've been in coaching, I've probably done close to a
thousand things to motivate kids and teams. I guarantee you
that a lot of them I wouldn't want to talk about at a church
social, PTA or garden party. But we're not teaching kids
how to play Canasta." Knight, on CNN/SI's report citing an
"unnamed source": "What's an unnamed source? Is an unnamed
source me standing up here and saying that I just was told
outside by somebody who doesn't wish to be identified that
65 percent of the men in this room are having extramarital
affairs with sheep?" But CBS SportsLine's Dennis Dodd
writes that CNN/SI "presented a fair, balanced report" (CBS
SportsLine.com, 3/17). In Boston, Howard Manly writes that
CNN/SI's report "wasn't a hatchet job, as some Knight
supporters suggest, but rather a revealing look into
Knight's bizarre coaching style" (BOSTON GLOBE, 3/17). But
FSN's Keith Olbermann called it a "really odd journalistic
development" that the CNN/SI story "did not appear in the SI
part of the [venture]: Sports Illustrated magazine or Web
site" ("Fox Sports News," FSN, 3/16).
BAD TIMING? In Baltimore, Milton Kent, criticized FSN's
Olbermann for saying the report had "cheap shot written all
over it": "Hope someone makes good whine out of the sour
grapes that are coming out of ESPN and Fox over CNN/SI's
reporting [the Knight story]. ... Gosh, you don't suppose
that if either Fox or ESPN had former Indiana players on
camera talking about the excesses of Knight that they would
run it, no matter when those things were alleged to have
happened, not to mention leading into the NCAA tournament,
do you?" (Baltimore SUN, 3/17). CNN/SI spokesperson Amy
Sasser, on the timing of the report: "To be honest, we were
working on this up to the very last minute. It wasn't like
it was something we sat on. If the piece had been ready a
month ago, we would have run it a month ago. If it had
taken another three months to be ready, we would have run it
three months from now" (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 3/17).
