I’m not defending Leach either but was curious as to what you thought was out of Knight’s playbook. I’m not sure that Leach did anything that was necessarily out of bounds but I don’t know the details and haven’t really followed the story.
“I’m not sure that Leach did anything that was necessarily out of bounds but I don’t know the details and haven’t really followed the story.”
Even if Knight (and other coaches of his era) did nasty things to players, such isn’t allowed now. Woody Hayes can’t be punching opposing players on the sideline, for instance.
The story is that this player was told to stay away from practice by doctors. To “punish” the kid, he was locked in solitary confinement in non-residential places (ie, cleaning closet?), in the dark, and told to stand there, not leaning on anything. If that would’ve happened at Gitmo then we’d be hearing about it on the nightly news (like the hooded guy w/ his arms out?).
It might’ve happened in the past, but it cannot happen now. And, even if Knight did that in the past, it doesn’t make it right (now or then).
Basically, he gave a scholarship to the son of an ex-nfl player and the son was a problem child. When the kid got a note from a team doctor saying he had a concussion and had to wear sunglasses to practice Leach sent him to a garage and later a “media room”.
Story is pretty slanted either pro or anti Leach. The article I linked seems to be one of the least biased. The kid’s dad works for Espn so over there Leach sent Jr. to a closet and confined him because he had a concussion. Local TV footage of the “closet” show it as a one car garage with some equipment in it and are trying to show that Jr was a team cancer.
My personal opinion is that the AD fired Leach when he lawyered up and pressed the university so he could coach during the Alamo Bowl instead of just keeping this “in house”. Leach and the AD had a pretty big battle over Leach’s salary last summer.