Neil Reed: ruined forever and ever by Bobby Knight

If you were known for only one thing in your entire life, how would you like that one thing to be this:

You were bullied by somebody famous.

That was the fate of Neil Reed, who back in 1997 foolishly put his throat in the way of Bobby Knight's vice-like grip.

Even though Knight was a bellicose boor -- and, by the late-90s, an out-of-touch geezer who had stopped winning NCAA tournament games as he ran a once-proud program into the ground -- many fans/apologists/lemmings never forgave Reed for his role in Knight's exodus from Hoosierland.

The incident, caught on tape that clearly showed Knight throttling the young basketball player, led to Bobby being put on double-secret probation by Miles "Dean Wormer" Brand. Another incident soon followed (of course), and Knight was sent packing.

Ridiculously -- but predictably -- the bully was deified and the victim was vilified. This, of course, is typical behavior of blindly loyal college sports lemmings (see: Paterno Worshippers, Penn State University).

With the pitchfork-and-torch crowd closing in, Reed had to bolt Hoosierland and ended up at Southern Miss. He eventually became a high school coach and teacher.

Neil Reed died last week at 36 of heart complications. I'm guessing that thousands of Hoosierland sickos were happy when they heard the news.

His obituary in every newspaper in the country identified him as the player choked by Knight. That's who Neil Reed was -- not only until his dying days but for all eternity.

Bobby Knight not only ruined Reed's basketball career and Reed's life, the bully also ruined Neil Reed's death.

How sad is that?

Bobby Knight's last losing legacy

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Were coaching genius hereditary, James Wooden, Allie McGuire and Adolph Rupp II would be heralded throughout the land.

It isn't ... and they aren't.

Pat Knight isn't heralded, either. He's just another ex-coach, having been canned by Texas Tech after his Red Raiders compiled the second-worst record in the Big 12 during his three-year run.

Ten years ago, Bobby Knight came out of forced retirement to energize the Texas Tech program and put Lubbock on the map. Short term, the hire was a resounding success. Knight, truly one of the great coaching minds in sports history, worked wonders with the decent group of basketball players he inherited.

In his fourth season, the Red Raiders advanced to the Sweet Sixteen -- something his Hoosiers couldn't do in his final six stormy seasons at Indiana. Texas Tech fans, who had been apathetic for decades, turned out to games. ESPN even found Lubbock a few times.

Knight seemed to get bored, however, and the year after the Sweet Sixteen -- when his first full recruiting class was in -- the Red Raiders went 15-17. Two years later, his program flagging and attendance waning, he resigned midseason.

As part of his employment, he had arranged for Pat to take over when he stepped down. It turned out to be the coaching version of a fraternity legacy: an ill-equipped kid being invited to pledge only because his old man had been frat president.

Unlike Bobby, Pat actually is a reasonable fellow. There are no known cases of him having strangled players at practice or throwing chairs across the court. He handled his firing with class.

Unlike Bobby, Pat can't coach a lick.

His Red Raiders were rotten, and empty seats outnumbered filled ones at home games.

Maybe now he'll follow his pop to ESPN. There, he wouldn't have to do much to eclipse Bobby, who has trouble putting consecutive coherent sentences together.
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Joining forces with a juggernaut

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The Bald Truth

OK, folks, here's a little more foreplay ...

Within the next day or three or five, The Baldest Truth will be a regular feature on ChicagoNow, Tribune Co.'s new blog site.

You will need to go to a new address, which I will provide here as soon as my stuff is up and running. Until then, do feel free to check out the site - CLICK HERE - if for no other reason than to see how much better it will be after I start posting there. (That's a joke, ChicagoNow folks; please take it as such.)

I'm not doing this for the money, because there won't be much of it coming my way. I'll be getting paid mostly by the pageview, so be sure to tell your friends and families (and families of friends) - especially Chicago-area peeps, because local hits count more toward my bottom line.

Nor am I doing this for the exposure. I've been at this so long, all that ego-driven stuff has become secondary.

Mostly, I'm doing it because I've got abso-freakin'-lutely nuthin' better to do! Wait ... I didn't really say that ...

Actually, I'm doing it because it's a cool opportunity for a guy who has been a newspaper hack for most of his life.

It's a chance to join forces on ChicagoNow with media personalities such as Len Kasper, Bob Brenly, David Kaplan, Chet Coppock and Bruce Wolf as well as jock/bloggers like Black Jack McDowell and Adewale Ogunleye.

And it's a natural next progression given that The Baldest Truth has been up and running for nearly three years.

Yes, it really has been that long. I started blogging back when the Bears were on their way to the Super Bowl and before the Copleys sold me and my colleagues into the debt cesspool that is GateHouse Media.

So keep an eye out for The Baldest Truth's grand ChicagoNow unveiling by checking back here early and often.

Phew! I need a cigarette. Was it good for you, too?

The Balder Truth

Nice to see that first-base ump Brian Gorman brought his A-game to the World Series.

Hey, he succeeded at getting three outs on only two blown calls.

Take that, Phil Cuzzi!

THE BALDEST TRUTH

As a guy who regularly pokes fun at Bobby Knight - after all, the man is such a large, stationary target - I also have to give him one of these (I'm doing a thumbs-up sign) when he does the right thing.

Somewhere, somebody probably is ripping The General for declining to attend his induction into Indiana's Athletic Hall of Fame, but they shouldn't. Knight is absolutely right in believing his appearance would be a huge sideshow - and a major distraction for the six other inductees.

So kudos, Bobby. You are the one of the five classiest guys ever to choke Neil Reed.

He's No. 6!

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The Bald Truth

Before Jay Cutler came along, the last Bear to wear No. 6 was Kevin Butler back in 1995. Just wait until 14 years after Cutler retires and the Bears give No. 6 to some guy named Dutler.

The Quote

"That doesn't really involve what we've gotta do in America to fix America, so it's a mute point." - Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, during an appearance on Bill Maher's HBO show.

The Old Quote Revisited

"I said I wasn’t gonna answer any more about Soriano. That’s a mute story." - Lou Piniella, getting perturbed last year when a reporter asked him about Alfonso Soriano.

The Conclusion

You know, come to think of it, I've never seen Joe The Plumber and Lou The Skipper in the same place at the same time.

The List

Five Cutler-trade-related e-mail observations from Gene Chamberlain (the former Bears beat reporter who worked with me when we were both with the Copley Newspaper group):

1. Hell froze over and pigs grew wings.

2. And for some reason, I think they'll still find a way to go 8-8 next season. They can blame it on Turner or injuries or Lovie. Or Riggleman.

3. The Bears traded a first-rounder for a QB who grew up in Indiana and was a Bears fan and got off to a great start in his career ... Rick Mirer.

4. At least this time when they traded for the QB who grew up in Indiana, they didn't make everybody go downtown for a press conference so we could watch Dave Wannstedt drink light beer with ice in it.

5. When the pressure was on last season, Cutler played the same way for Denver that Kyle Orton played for the Bears when the pressure was on. He sucked.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

When Mike Krzyzewski was talking about that very clever Risky Business Guitar Hero ad he filmed with Bobby Knight, Rick Pitino and Roy Williams, he made a reference to "Rick, Roy and Coach Knight."

Really? Is one of the great coaches ever so afraid of insulting Bobby that he feels he must kiss Bobby's ring at every opportunity? Pretty freakin' sad.

Kentucky has tradition - but not the best job

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Sunday's final four:

1. Why, why, why on earth would Tom Izzo, John Calipari, Billy Donovan or any other coach who already has built a top-tier program be even the least bit interested in going to Kentucky now that another good coach has been driven away from Bluegrass country?

Izzo is back in the Final Four with Michigan State, which for the last decade has established itself as the premier program in the Big Ten and one of the very best in the country - far better than Kentucky, in fact.

Calipari is worshipped in Memphis, where he is king of Conference USA and where he successfully recruits some of the very best players in the land.  According to several ratings services, he is bringing the No. 1 class of 2009 to Memphis. At Kentucky, the alums and other hard-core fans probably would expect him to do better than No. 1. Who needs it?

Donovan has won two national titles at Florida and continues to bring top talent to Gainesville, where he is revered for having already given the thumbs down to Kentucky once.

As a bonus - a huge, enormous, gigandulous bonus - none of these guys faces the kind of scrutiny and pressure in his current job as he would at Kentucky. As an extra bonus, all are paid the same kind of outrageous salaries they'd get from the Bluegrass boyz.

There are a handful of traditional powerhouse programs and Kentucky is one of them. (Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Indiana and UCLA also leap to mind.) But I'd say that many others, including Michigan State, Memphis and UConn, have pulled alongside - and, in many cases, surpassed - those traditional powers. 

Funny thing about tradition in sports: It guarantees nothing. Just ask the Cowboys how much tradition has been worth on the playing field the last few years. New traditions get established all the time in sports; witness the Red Sox now being clutch winners while the Yankees have become chokers.

Tom Crean left Marquette for Indiana, saying it was a slam-dunk decision because "Indiana is Indiana." Well, Indiana hasn't been Indiana for awhile now, including Bobby Knight's last half-dozen years there, and Marquette - thanks in great part to Crean - has surpassed Indiana by miles. Crean is counting on tradition helping him recruit better players to Indiana than he did to Marquette, but most ratings services say his Marquette replacement, Buzz Williams, will be bringing in a group as good as or better than Crean will to Hoosierland.

Of course, once upon an Al McGuire time, Marquette was one of those traditional powerhouses. 

Yes, Kentucky has tradition out the ying-yang. But so do many other places where the pressure isn't so great a coach feels like killing himself 50 times a year. There are too many other fantastic schools at which a coach can win big without putting himself through the torture.

2. Saturday's Villanova-Pitt game was so good, I found myself actually cheering several plays - something I very rarely do because I'm more of a detached appreciator of excellence than I am of a fan. I must admit: It was pretty darn fun.

3. As usual, the "experts" couldn't stop talking about the distractions facing UConn after word of possible NCAA recruiting violations surfaced before the weekend. Ridiculous. Why would UConn players be even the slightest bit distracted by this? Turns out, they weren't, as the Huskies took down Purdue and Missouri to get to the Final Four.

4. In honor of  Tiger Woods officially being back, it's time to take a mulligan on my Final Four picks. What other choice do I have, since I managed to go a sterling 0-for-4?

As much as I appreciate Izzo's Spartans, UConn can play whatever game Michigan State wants to play - and play it just a tad better. On the other side of the bracket, I'm going with the upset: Villanova's tough, talented perimeter players, augmented by vastly underrated Dante Cunningham, making Carolina blue.

And in the all-Big East title game ... UConn 80, 'Nova 74.

Call your bookies and pull out those wallets, folks. I mean, I haven't steered you wrong yet!

First cars, superstars and har-de-hars

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The Big Milestone

That's my soon-to-graduate-from-college daughter, Katie, and her first car. 

She took possession of it Monday and drove it back to Lawrence U. in Appleton. With its 4-wheel-drive, the 2003 Ford Escape will help her navigate the Wisconsin winters and will give all of us - including her old man and old lady - a little peace of mind. 

For those wondering exactly how spoiled Katie is ... we didn't let her get her driver's license until she was 18, she had no wheels until now and she put up a pretty nice chunk of her own hard-earned cash toward this graduation present (which has 81,000 miles on it).

Congrats, Katie, you deserve it!

The Bald Truth

Although he did nothing but contribute the genes, Michael Jordan was still the man in the spotlight as son Marcus helped Whitney Young win the Illinois big-schools prep hoops title.

The media barely cared that the school won a championship. After all, the real important news was that Michael shed tears over his son's exploits.

No matter what, it's always about Michael, isn't it?

The Balder Truth

One weekend in, I'm already tired of hearing announcers yammer on about players in the NCAA tournament experiencing "fatigue."

Please. As Bobby Knight said years ago: With all of the time outs that are called - and the length of said time outs - any 20-year-old who is tired must be in pretty crappy shape.

A 30-second time out lasts about 90 seconds, a full time out lasts about 2 1/2 minutes and a TV time out goes on for approximately an ice age. March Madness, indeed.

Believe me, these superbly conditioned athletes get far more fatigued during every team practice than they do during NCAA tourney games.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

"Four World Series, three world championships. That there are men with plaques in Cooperstown who never experienced one - and I was able to be on three teams over seven years that won it all - is another 'beyond my wildest dreams' set of memories I'll take with me." - Curt Schilling, announcing his retirement on his blog.

He averaged only about 11 victories during his 20-year career, but I'm leaning toward giving Schilling my Hall of Fame vote when he's eligible in five years.

Why? 

His incredible postseason performance (11-2, 2.23 ERA). 

His role in helping the Red Sox reverse the Curse of the Bambino.

His outstanding pitching during the heart of the Steroid Era. 

And, of course, his humility. I mean, at least he stopped short of claiming to be the best pitcher ever.

Way to go, Marquette Bald Eagles!

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Friday's not-yet-final four:

1. Had I known the Marquette players were going to shave their heads, I'd have picked my Golden Warrior Bald Eagles to win the national title!

2. After a flying start, my bracket took a severe hit Friday afternoon. I put too much faith in West Virginia - predicting that Bob Huggins' Mountaineers would reach the Elite Eight - and it cost me when they lost to Dayton. So while I'm 21-3 through three sessions, it feels like I'm doing a lot worse.

3. Note to extremely red-faced bully-turned-yakker Bobby Knight: SPF 100, dude!

4. Those of us who have Pitt as our eventual national champions can't feel too good after the Panthers were taken to the limit by mighty East Tennessee State. Another performance like that against Oklahoma State, and Pitt can pack it up. Then again, the ETSU debacle might have been just the "Hey wake up, Dummies!" Pittsburgh needed.

(Check back in on TBT after the night games for Friday's final four.)

Greg Norman: Share the wealth (as long is it's not mine)

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The Bald Truth

Ever willing and able to take the lead, Greg Norman says PGA Tour pros should show some "sensitivity" regarding the world's economic plight by voluntarily taking a collective pay cut.

Funny ... Norman didn't conclude by saying he'd happily take lesser profits on his clothing line, golf-course construction company and other businesses.

But what did you expect? The man never was much of a finisher. 

The Balder Truth

You see Pat Knight getting all p.o.-ed at the refs and wonder: "Now where the heck did that come from? The kid was raised better than that!"

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Back in 1988, when I was a 20-something reporter for AP in Minneapolis, the Vikings signed Mossy Cade, a talented ex-Packers cornerback who had just been paroled after serving a 15-month term for rape.

Cade had served his debt to society and the Vikings needed a good defensive back, so I applauded GM Mike Lynn's decision to give Cade a second shot at an NFL career.

Immediately, public outcry was so loud and severe that Lynn, who rarely gave a rat's rear what others thought, buckled under the pressure and cut the player. Cade never played football again.

I bring this up because soon, dog-abuser Michael Vick will be out of prison and looking for a job. Some NFL owner will sign the former Pro Bowl QB ... and immediately PETA and other groups will go crazy.

Here's hoping the owner who signs him won't buckle.

Yes, what Vick did was horrible. But you know what? That's why we have prisons. He served his time. He apologized for his sins. He has been rehabilitated, which is the entire idea of the system. 

It's time to move on.

Of pot-bellied Bobby and pot-puffing Phelps

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The Bald Truth

Well, of course Bobby Knight is interested in coaching again, be it at Georgia or elsewhere.

Rivers to cross, mountains to climb, sophomores to choke and all that.

The Question

How is next year supposed to be the year for the Cubs now that they've traded both Rich Hill and Michael Wuertz?

The Balder Truth

And to think ... a year ago at this time, the Cubs wouldn't even think of including The Great Rich Hill in a deal for Brian Roberts, the leadoff hitter they've lacked forever.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

You gotta love the way we media folks keep saying Michael Phelps was "photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe."

After all, it would be unethical for us to say an American icon was smoking dope through a bong.

Phelps might have been inhaling asthma medicine. Or maybe he was chilling out with some kind of Zen incense he got from Phil Jackson. Or maybe he was indulging in a fancy hookah pipe.

The mainstream media avoided the word "pot" ... and so did Phelps in his apology:

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public - it will not happen again."

That's right. Next time he's about to fire up a bong, he'll make sure there are no cellphone cameras or video recording devices in the room.

Please don't interpret any of this as some old codger tsk-tsk-tsking Phelps. I might have tried pot once or twice myself during my youth. On the heinous behavior scale, a 23-year-old smoking dope ranks somewhere between picking one's nose in public and rolling one's eyes at one's parents.

Doesn't mean I won't poke fun at Aquaman about this whole deal, though.

Call 'em the DePaul Droopy Demons

One is DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright. The other is cartoon legend Droopy Dog. Won't say which is which, but both have the same number of Big East victories this season.

The Question

Were those really Bo Ryan's usually fundamentally sound Wisconsin Badgers who kept committing shot-clock violations even though they trailed Illinois by double digits with less than 10 minutes to play?

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Always a friend of the referees, Bobby Knight said officials would do a better job if they worked fewer games each week because they'd be less fatigued.

I suppose. And coaches might not be so stressed out if they didn't eat, drink, walk and talk basketball 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. 

If a coach takes more down time, though, he might lose an edge because other coaches wouldn't. Which could cost him his paycheck. And if refs only work three times a week, it would affect their standard of living.

Everybody would like more time to just chill ... but it isn't always practical now, is it?