Bob Knight

[tornado]

As this college basketball season begins, Bob Knight will be in the headlines for a couple reasons.

Bob Knight's all time record coaching college basketball is 869-350. He needs only 11 wins to surpass Dean Smith and
become college basketball's all time winningest coach.(D-I)

But is he assured of getting 11 wins this year?
He ended 2005-2006 with a record of 15-17, and may have an
even weaker team this season, as he still will be short on experienced players.
Since Bob hit 800 wins (he was 800-303 at that time), he has
gone 69-47, not too impressive, and he now stands a chance of having back to back losing seasons for the first time since
he was just beginning his coaching career at Army.

Two of his top players also just underwent surgery. One of them, Damir Suljagic just underwent repeat surgery on his ACL,
and may not be able to contribute much this season.
Jay Mitchell, a juco transfer, also had knee surgery over the summer.

Then there was the travesty/embarrassment of Bobby Knight doing a cheap-realty show over the summer on ESPN where a
bunch of minimally talented wannabes competed in a contrived on-air effort to do a Survivor-type show, and the winner was
Tyler Hoffmeister, and undersized, balding, not very athletic pre-med forward.

Interestingly, I could only find Hoffmeister's name on the Texas Tech roster in one location, with other sites not listing him.

http://texastech.rivals.com/cbroster.asp?team=TEXASTECH

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/roster?collegeId=2641

The ESPN site is the only one that lists Hoffmeister, but then it was ESPN that put on the show that got him elected as the contest winner.
In the ESPN roster, there are a total of 19 players listed, so the list must include at least six walk-ons.
Hoffmeister is not going to get much playing time, so I think in the end this walk-on contest will be seen as a staged joke on the poor guy.

[Fastbreak]

Maybe it's just the light, but has Bobby been making too many trips to the dessert bar?

[patrick_o'brian]

Re: Bob Knight

As this college basketball season begins, Bob Knight will be in the headlines for a couple reasons.

Bob Knight's all time record coaching college basketball is 869-350. He needs only 11 wins to surpass Dean Smith and
become college basketball's all time winningest coach.(D-I)

But is he assured of getting 11 wins this year?
He ended 2005-2006 with a record of 15-17, and may have an
even weaker team this season, as he still will be short on experienced players.
Since Bob hit 800 wins (he was 800-303 at that time), he has
gone 69-47, not too impressive, and he now stands a chance of having back to back losing seasons for the first time since
he was just beginning his coaching career at Army.

Two of his top players also just underwent surgery. One of them, Damir Suljagic just underwent repeat surgery on his ACL,
and may not be able to contribute much this season.
Jay Mitchell, a juco transfer, also had knee surgery over the summer.

Then there was the travesty/embarrassment of Bobby Knight doing a cheap-realty show over the summer on ESPN where a
bunch of minimally talented wannabes competed in a contrived on-air effort to do a Survivor-type show, and the winner was
Tyler Hoffmeister, and undersized, balding, not very athletic pre-med forward.

Interestingly, I could only find Hoffmeister's name on the Texas Tech roster in one location, with other sites not listing him.

http://texastech.rivals.com/cbroster.asp?team=TEXASTECH

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/roster?collegeId=2641

The ESPN site is the only one that lists Hoffmeister, but then it was ESPN that put on the show that got him elected as the contest winner.
In the ESPN roster, there are a total of 19 players listed, so the list must include at least six walk-ons.
Hoffmeister is not going to get much playing time, so I think in the end this walk-on contest will be seen as a staged joke on the poor guy.

69-47 isn't that impressive? Since when? 22 games over .500 at Texas Tech is pretty impressive. Since when has Texas Tech been a powerhouse that is expected to win that many games? Coach Knight has done a tremendous job down there. Considering the best basketball player ever to come out of Texas Tech is Sheryl Swoopes I think he has done pretty well. He will get 11 wins. Don't forget that he is a good coach and he knows how to win basketball games!

[tornado]

Just a followup, if anyone ever watched the ESPN "Reality show" Knight School, where a bunch of contestants battled for a contrived, orchestrated, and scripted reality show that was to select a kid for a walk on spot on the Texas Tech roster.
Sort-of a basketball version of The Bachelor.

The ultimate winner of the show's contest was Tyler Hoffmeister, who indeed did get a spot on Texas Tech's roster.

But in the end, he played only a total of 10 minutes all season (most of which was in the 34 point blowout of UALR) and got in only 4 games.
His page on the Texas Tech website never gave any info on him, and Tyler played less than any other player on the roster.
(one other walkon, Justin Wilkerson left after only a few games.)
In fact the next closest player in minutes played had 5 times as much as Tyler.

http://texastech.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/hoffmeister_tyler00.html

This sounds as gimmicky as the contrived points that were orchestrated to allow a UConn womens player to get a basket even though her leg was in a cast, just so she could set a record. This poor guy was being used by ESPN to get ratings, and in the end he essentially never played.
Let's see if he's even on the squad next season.

[VromanFan]

I watched a couple of episodes of that show. It was pretty stupid.

But I do remember they said on the show that the winner would be a candidate to walk on the team. I don't remember hearing any guarentee of a roster spot...and especially not playing time.

Getting in bed with ESPN is certainly something that's worthy of criticism. So are a lot of things Knight has said and done over the years.

But I'm sure Texas Tech is thrilled to have him...that school is in West Texas like 300 miles from any sizeable metro area...getting that school's team to .500 is an accomplishment...and Knight has taken them to the NCAA's a bunch of times.

And he's also helping to raise $1 Million for the Texas Tech library. http://library.ttu.edu/ul/onlinegiving/about.html

I'm sure TT is plenty happy to have him. At least until he does something crazy.

[tornado]

As I recall, the winner was to be given a spot, with no further contingencies.
Of course no guarantee of playing time, but 10 minutes all season does beg for a little skepticism that BK was really doing this for anything more than the publicity and money he got from ESPN.

[VromanFan]

As I recall, the winner was to be given a spot, with no further contingencies.
Of course no guarantee of playing time, but 10 minutes all season does beg for a little skepticism that BK was really doing this for anything more than the publicity and money he got from ESPN.

"Coach Knight will select one individual who will have a chance to walk-on for the 2006-2007 men???‚¬?„?s basketball team."

this from TT at: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/knightschool/

Per this article at least ESPN did not pay Knight to do the show, although its unclear if some other entity did:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/mccarthy/2006-02-16-sports-on-tv_x.htm

[tornado]

Vroman Fan, that story says ESPN is not paying Knight, but that ESPN is contracting with
"RIVR Media, which created the show."

So obviously, the producers and creators of the show are the ones paying Knight, even though ESPN is not directly paying him.
This kind of word-parsing is exactly what I'd expect and call the term "reality" into question when they pull this kind of shenanigan trying to convince you this is real and Knight is acting normally and not being paid.

When you watch The Bachelor or Survivor, do you ever wonder how a person can act naturally and pretend they don't see the camera right smack in their faces, even when talking intimately and seriously about supposed life-death issues?
When I watched the Bob Knight show I was struck by how the players/students all literally bumped into the guy holding the camera but did such a good job of NOT looking at the camera, a task that must have been hard and is noticable as to how they did a good job or took several "takes" before they got it right.
These are the things that stand out to me and cry-out that this is NOT reality, otherwise they'd be glancing at the camera.
By the way, occasionally they still replay those segments at about 2-3 AM on ESPN2.

[VromanFan]

Vroman Fan, that story says ESPN is not paying Knight, but that ESPN is contracting with
"RIVR Media, which created the show."

So obviously, the producers and creators of the show are the ones paying Knight, even though ESPN is not directly paying him.
this kind of word-parsing is exactly what i'd expect and call the term "reality" into question when they pull this kind of shenanigan trying to convince you this is real and Knight is acting normally and not being paid.

By the way, occasionally they still replay those segments at about 2-3 AM on ESPN2.

Hey don't ask me to stick up for reality TV or ESPN. I'm with you there.

I don't know if BK took money himself, or if he put any proceeds to the library or the school. I really don't know. I was looking on the internet and couldn't find an answer.

Obviously money or not such a show could be used to try to boost the school's profile for recruiting and such.

But as I said, I saw an episode or two and I thought it was a lame program.