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After epic press conference, Pat Knight is my coach of the year
Published: 2/24/2012 6:14 PM
Last Modified: 2/24/2012 6:14 PM

Anybody selling “I (heart) Pat Knight” bumper stickers? If you are, I’m buying.

In case you haven’t heard, the Lamar and former Texas Tech basketball coach was the star of a glorious postgame press conference Thursday night.

Think about this: What if, before heading to the interview room after a game, a coach swallowed a big dose of truth serum?

What would the coach say?

He might say some of the things Knight said after his team lost to Stephen F. Austin.

For instance:

--“We’ve got the worst group of seniors right now that I’ve ever been associated with. Their mentality is awful. Their attitude is awful. It has been their M.O. for the last three years.”

--“We’ve had problems with them off the court, on the court, classroom, drugs, being late for stuff. All that stuff correlates together if you’re going to win games. You just can’t do all that B.S. and expect to win games. And if people have a problem with me being harsh about it, I don’t care. I came here to clean something up.”

--“We have a bunch of tin men out there right now. They’ve got no heart. I’ve never been around a team that’s got so many problems as this one has. Usually you’ve got one or two guys that are a problem. We’ve got an infestation of guys that are hard to coach. I’ve never been around a group as a whole that are like that.... When I played, if you acted like the way some of these guys do, you got shoved in a locker with a forearm up against your neck and told you don’t do that.”

--“These guys have got to learn. They have got to grow up. They don’t need to be coddled. They don’t need to be babysat. That’s why we have problems in society. People don’t make kids accountable. It’s just frustrating. I feel sorry for the fans. I feel sorry for the school. These kids are stealing money being on scholarship with their approach to things.”

There’s a saying in the media business that there’s no cheering in the press box (or interview room). Can I make a one-time exception and give Knight a standing ovation because he had the guts to say what he said?

Knight told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that he had received texts and phone calls from other coaches (he didn’t identify them) who loved what he said. Knight told the Wall Street Journal other coaches are proud of him because they are all “dealing with the same thing.”

Keep in mind that Knight’s team has a winning record this season. But he’s still choosing to hold players to a standard. Good for him.

I interviewed Knight for a feature piece prior to a Texas Tech-OSU game in 2007 and found him to be (as we have learned once more) overly candid. He talked about his time as a coach in pro basketball’s minor leagues and said he was more of a psychologist than a coach. “You just tried to motivate guys and make sure they aren’t going to jail and stuff like that.”

Knight said during the interview that he had 1,000 stories about his minor league hoops tour of duty, like the time he was drawing up a crunch-time play during a timeout and two players began cussing each other because they were dating the same girl.

During his first training camp as head coach of the Wisconsin Blast, Knight got a call from hotel management that marijuana smoke was billowing out of a room where two players were staying.

Recalling that incident, Knight said, “I ran their asses off. One of the guys was a pastor on the side. I had a pretty good feeling it wasn’t him. The other guy starts throwing up after 10 minutes of running, so I cut his ass right on the spot.”

I liked Knight -- son of coaching legend Bobby Knight -- when he told me that story. I love him now.


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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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