A.V. Club Blog

Knight Moves

posted by: Scott Tobias

August 5, 2005 - 11:51pm

February can’t come soon enough. In what may be a new pinnacle for reality

television—or maybe a nadir, I can’t decide—Bobby Knight has

been given his own reality show, called Knight

School, to air on ESPN this February.

Bobby Knight

-->The basic idea is that Knight will have

16 Texas Tech students competing for a chance to be a walk-on on the Red Raider

basketball team. The lucky 16 will be treated to the same boot-camp style drills,

wind sprints, and strategy sessions as the scholarship players, and perhaps even

a hidden-camera demonstration of the coach’s patented stranglehold maneuver.

I guess the producers (and his endlessly indulgent keepers at Texas Tech) feel

that Knight will be able to put a good face on camera, but he’s never done

so in the past, so what makes anyone think he’s going to start now? In fact,

one of the things people admire about Knight is that he doesn’t let a sense

of decorum, respect, or public relations concerns get in the way of a good Robert

Novak-style meltdown. Obviously, Knight will enjoy a measure of creative control

that live television doesn’t afford, but I think he vastly overestimates

his own charisma. (The show’s producers, on the other hand, are probably

secretly hoping for another one of his annual seasons on the brink.) Whatever

your feelings for Knight, this should be some riveting television—great,

awful television or awfully great television—and I for one can’t wait

to see the “lucky” winner rot away on the Raider bench, waiting for

his two minutes of garbage time during a blowout to make up for the hours of abuse