#142- Robert Abbott: The Bobby Knight story—the cost of unchecked anger, ego, & winning at all costs

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Bobby Knight survived decades of abusive behavior because winning made him more powerful than the university itself.

  Abbott (six-time Emmy winner, E60 co-creator, director of ESPN's 30 for 30 'The Last Days of Knight') calls Knight as the most powerful man in Indiana: three national titles (1976, 1981, 1987), an undefeated 1976 season and the 1984 Olympic gold. Over his 29 years at Indiana several university presidents came and went while Knight stayed.

• 02

  The university knew about Knight's conduct at least 13 years before it acted.

  During his 1999 reporting Abbott found that in 1987 Indiana's Bloomington Faculty Council was so offended by John Feinstein's book about Knight's program, 'A Season on the Brink,' that it tried to do something. Knight then won the 1987 championship and the effort went nowhere. Abbott calls that moment the 'shot across the bow' that showed everyone who was really in charge, and says it protected Knight until 2000.

• 03

  Knight didn't fundamentally change; what changed was media access and his results.

  Abbott thinks Knight in 2000 was largely the man of the early 1970s; growing coverage simply exposed more. Earlier he pushed players and then 'reeled them back in' enough to win titles. In the 90s his teams won 20 games a season but kept losing early in the tournament.

• 04

  The story began with a simple question: why were Indiana's best players leaving?

  In April 1999 star Luke Recker, the team's leading scorer and minutes leader, announced he was transferring, the third notable departure in about two years. Abbott's CNN boss Steve Robinson assigned him to find out why; Abbott suspected elite teenage recruits no longer accepted Knight's style.

• 05

  A 90-minute phone call with former player Neil Reed produced three allegations that became the backbone of the story.

  Reed said Knight had grabbed him by the throat at practice, had thrown the university president out of a practice, and had come out of a bathroom stall and shown the team soiled toilet paper to tell them how badly they were playing. Abbott first wondered whether Reed was a disgruntled ex-player exaggerating, and spent months confirming each account before CNN aired a 16-minute piece.

• 06

  Patient, trust-based sourcing is what got people to talk.

  Abbott reported 'at my tempo' for about 18 months and filled roughly a dozen notebooks, which sat in a box in his basement for 15 years until he made the film. He started on the edges, with Hoosier Basketball magazine founder Gary Donna, before approaching insiders. His rule on calls: keep a source talking for two minutes and you can keep them for five. Tracking down Recker in Chicago and getting him on camera was the breakthrough.

• 07

  The practice tape vindicated the reporting, and CNN refused to be intimidated.

  After the first piece drew attacks on CNN, Abbott and Reed, a videotape of the choking incident arrived in Abbott's mailbox. Indiana's trustees and vice presidents flew to Atlanta. When they hinted at legal action, Abbott's boss Steve Robinson calmly offered to walk them to the legal department, adding that the tape would be airing on CNN, CNN International, Headline News and some 300 affiliates before the elevator doors opened. Abbott calls it the most powerful moment of his 34-year career.

• 08

  Anger can act like an anesthetic for shame, a pattern Attia sees in Knight and in himself.

  Attia, drawing on his conversations with therapist Terry Real, describes anger as briefly numbing an inner hollowness and inadequacy, with grandiosity standing in for real strength, followed by shame that feeds the next outburst. A mid-1970s story from journalist Dave Kindred suggested Knight knew he had a temper and kept asking why he kept ending up in these situations. In Abbott's view that self-awareness never turned into change.

• 09

  Indiana's 'zero tolerance' compromise was a failure of nerve.

  Abbott calls Indiana's decision to keep Knight under a 'zero tolerance' policy in 2000 one of the great acts of institutional cowardice. In the fall of 2000 Knight grabbed a student's arm and was fired.

• 10

  Abbott's biggest regret is missing the human story of Neil Reed.

  At 35 he focused on the journalism and treated Reed mainly as a source. Rewatching his reporting 16 to 18 years later, he saw a young man whose whole identity, from a Bob Knight camp T-shirt at under age 10 onward, had been built around Knight. He says he should have done a follow-up years earlier, and he made Reed the heart of the film.