Bobby Knight's trachea-grabbing, secretary-belittling tactics did much to sully the once-venerated coaching profession. They also taught every leading university man from Charlottesville to Cheyenne one very important lesson: Carelessness kills.
Evidently, Georgia Tech football coach George O'Leary opted to duck out of Knight's seminar early that day.
Vitriol did not undo Indiana basketball's leading man. Nor did rage, or temper, or wrath or any other synonym for the spiteful outbursts that now define the career of arguably the best coach since John Wooden. No, sloppiness sent Bobby Knight to the stocks.
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Not the kind of sloppiness emanating from an 18-year-old's dorm room. Not the inattention to detail renowned in loose-lipped politicians. Knight is as meticulous a micromanager as you'll find, but he is not sensitive to the emotional needs of his thinned-skinned players. Raise your voice and they cry. Grab their arm and they scream fire in a theater. Sit them down and they transfer.
Athletes are emotionally bruised more easily than a premature banana. In other words, coaches, if ever you pondered yelling at a player, even for the good of the team, don't. Even if you wanted to recline in your court-side chair and stretch your legs during a timeout, don't - you may accidentally clip a kid in the calf. Then you may get sued.
So what did O'Leary - a brilliant football tactician whose offensive IQ consistently foils opposing defenses - learn from this fiasco in Bloomington?
Absolutely nothing.
Last week, O'Leary, reputed as a tough but fair coach, disciplined offensive tackle Dustin Vaitekunas for missing a block by practically tossing him in front of a moving train. O'Leary figured the best way to teach the struggling young man a gridiron lesson was to hand him a football, order four hulking defensive lineman to charge at him like fire-breathing bulls, then whistle their unabated rush to an abrupt halt just a whisker before they trampled helpless Vaitekunas.
Only one problem: Two of the four didn't hear the whistle. They didn't stop either. Instead of noting his error, Vaitekunas became one with the Atlanta AstroTurf.
Trainers tended to the battered sophomore before helping him off the field. Vaitekunas and his mother Wanda Charpring are considering bringing O'Leary up on assault and battery charges.
"I want O'Leary arrested," Charping announced last week. O'Leary points to his spotless track record in defense of his actions.
I've heard both sides of this argument: Those who champion Vaitekunas as a victim of senseless coaching violence versus those who defend O'Leary's actions as simply "part of the game."
I admit, football is a brutally physical contest - not a contact sport, but a vicious, at times monstrous, means of displaying aggression. That comes with strapping on the pads and lacing up the cleats.
But it still doesn't justify O'Leary's deed. Unless the Yellow Jacket football program has been hiding out underground, everyone and his uncle heard about Knight's tumultuous downfall this summer. In fact, O'Leary probably could hear Knight's screams at ESPN's Jeremy Schaap resonating all the way from Assembly Hall.
O'Leary heard them, but he didn't listen, and in the end, that's where he went wrong: He was careless.
Bench the boy. Pull him aside and ingrain so many blocking schemes in his brain that Vaitekunas could teach me how to pull on a toss sweep. But when O'Leary put on his ignorant hat and opted for terror tactics, he paid the price. So too did Vaitekunas.
Implanting the fear of God in a football player may have worked when Bear Bryant was winning national championships and when Woody Hayes was grabbing facemasks. But in today's age of the fragile psyche and the fat ego, acts like Knight's and O'Leary's aren't hard-nosed attempts at discipline. They're blatant denials of the truth: that the game and the athletes playing the game have changed.
As for O'Leary's spotless coaching resumŠ, who cares? He made a mistake. Now it's time to own up to it and stop making excuses for an incident his sloppiness created. Perfect track records mean nothing when they aren't perfect anymore.
Maybe the next time Knight lashes out at everyone in the known universe, O'Leary will be wise enough to take notes.
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