BleacherReport — Former Indiana basketball player Todd Jadlow accused Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight of physical and emotional abuse in his memoir, Jadlow: On the Rebound.
Per Bob Kravitz of WTHR in Indianapolis, Jadlow stated Knight punched him in the back of the head, grabbed him by the neck and shook him violently and “made a habit…of grabbing players by the testicles and squeezing.”
“If he did those things today,” Jadlow said, “he would be in jail.”
Well I for one am shocked. Shocked! Bob Knight, the most even-keeled, mild-mannered man in the history of college sports, abused his players? Tried to give guys CTE before it was cool? Grabbed college kids by the balls and squeezed them? Shocking!
Ok, got that out of the way. So no, this isn’t surprising at all that Bobby Knight crossed the line a few hundred times. He was a hell of a coach, but also a well-documented nut job, and things like this undoubtedly happened all throughout his tenure. Of course they surface today, because dropping accusations of things that happened decades ago is apparently the new hottest thing in the streets, but it was going to come out eventually. And as always, one accusation will lead to more, and soon we’re gonna be talking about Bobby Knight in the same breath as Paterno, which is dumb. Plus, that asshole Kravitz is the one who “broke” Deflategate (I say “broke” because it’s hard to actually break a non-existent story), so I’m taking this all with a grain of salt.
Basically what I’m saying is, yeah this almost certainly happened and yeah it’s definitely wrong, but don’t let it absolutely ruin the legacy of one of the sport’s greatest coaches, which we often do too easily. You don’t think Vince Lombardi or Connie Mack smacked around a player or two now and then? Of course they did, times were different, and this is more recent but still not an exception. Some messed up accusations, for sure, but let’s let the full story unfold before we revoke the guy’s Hall of Fame membership.
Take Zone Sports 