Neil Reed

Most of you won't remember his name, but you will remember the choking incident to which he will be forever connected. For some reason I thought of him for the first time in years the other day. I believe someone must have made an allusion to him relative to the PSU scandal (either here or on another board I follow.) Not by name, as most had long forgotten his name, but rather the famous incident itself which was video taped by someone in the stands during an IU practice session. A tape that eventually led to Bobby Knight being fired.

He was the kid that dared to call out Bobby Knight on his methods. As a result he was run out of Bloomington and hounded by Knight worshipping haters and the press for the rest of his life. He died the other day, suddenly, at the age of 36.

While Bobby Knight may have once been a great coach, as in the case of Paterno, he gained absolute power and, quite predictably, it corrupted him.

The amazing thing is that Reed grew up worshiping Knight, as did his father, who was an assistant basketball coach at Southern Miss and Iowa State among other places.

Old school coaches like Knight are dinosaurs now. No one could get away with abusing student athletes like that any more; a good thing. I had out of control coaches in school who acted like that and turned what should have been an enjoyable experience, kids playing a game, into something akin to a military training camp.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-03-20/sports/9703200266_1_neil-reed-hoosiers-indiana

http://www.idsnews.com/news/inside/Story.aspx?id=69499

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/ncaa/07/26/obit-neil-reed.ap/index.html

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/bruce-feldman/19665532/the-neil-reed-i-knew

Very sad to haer especially what he leave behind. All respect to him.

its always interesting to hear what a coaches players (former players) think of him. i think that matters a lot.

i'm not going to defend (actively or passively) covering up child molestation by the way.

the case of neil reid / bobby knight is much like adam james / mike leach. more political than anything else.

its interesting to hear what their teammates and other players thought about it. not so much what the media / administration / public has to say. guys that live / have lived in the environment of high level athletics. understand what goes on and why.

Leach didn't grab James by the throat. James was made to sit by himself in a dark equipment room because he had been slacking off during drills. That got turned into he was being punished for having a concussion by his crybaby father (now running for Senate in TX). Big difference.

I always wondered who in their right mind would volunteer to play for Bobby Knight.

There was a time when Knight-type tactics were common place. I witnessed a similar incident in high school, also by a well known, respected basketball coach who has the record for most wins in state history (after 40 some years of coaching.) The kid, to his credit, slapped the coach's hand away from his neck and cursed at him. That is what Reed should have done.

Fearsome Forehand said:

Leach didn't grab James by the throat.

I always wondered who in their right mind would volunteer to play for Bobby Knight.

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pretty much everyone. and most of his former players seem to speak highly of the man and what they learned from him. i'm not going to judge the man like a lawyer. by a single incident. i'm more interested in the entire picture.

i don't recall details of the reid incident. was he hurt? or did it leave mainly emotional scars?

r2473 said:

pretty much everyone. and most of his former players seem to speak highly of the man and what they learned from him.

i don't recall details of the reid incident. was he hurt? or did it leave mainly emotional scars?

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This. The large majority of his former players love/idolize him (particularly Coach K at Duke). I don't believe he had a single NCAA infraction up to the point he was let go at Indiana and had a very high graduation rate while being one of the most successful bball coaches in history. Not defending his actions with Reed or throwing chairs, etc., but things like this happen quite often. I saw many a player get hard slaps to the helmet, jerked close to the coach by their shoulder pads, pulled along by their face mask when I played in college.

I remember watching Reed in college. He was just a year or two behind me. RIP. Too young to die from a massive heart attack.

Knight had a history of such incidents. He was completely out of control temper-wise.

Didn't he have a run in with Steve Alford, too? The chair throwing incident is a classic as are his press conferences.

Some of his highlights:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/basketball/ncaa/02/03/knight.timeline/

Reed wasn't injured, but let Knight (or your boss) grab you (or your kid) by the throat and see how you feel about it. At the time, Knight invited 3 or 4 of his starters to leave the team unless they agreed to his "conditions" whatever those were. Reed opted to leave after having been a starter for three years.

The tape came out some years later. That led to a reprimand by the IU President (Myles Brand?) and when Knight grabbed some other random kid on campus (not a player), he was fired.

Some of his highlights:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/basketball/ncaa/02/03/knight.timeline/

Fearsome Forehand said:

The kid, to his credit, slapped the coach's hand away from his neck and cursed at him. That is what Reed should have done.

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That sounds good, but I don't think it would have worked well with Bobby Knight.

Fearsome Forehand said:

Some of his highlights:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/basketball/ncaa/02/03/knight.timeline/

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If a regular person did all the things he did he would be probably looking at jail time for some of those in fractions and nobody would hire him.

Morality aside, are those techniques effective? Many of the people here will recognize the need in tennis to stay lose, and the danger of wanting a win too much. I'd think such a coach would have a team with poor morale.

Some coaches are abusive, some aren't. Both seem able to win. But I wonder if winning teams of abusive coaches aren't winners in spite of the coach, rather than because of the coach?

The key to coaching in college is to recruit the best players. If you can do that the rest takes care of itself.

John Wooden won a lot of games and never acted like an a-hole or abused his players.

The man who fired Knight, Myles Brand, also died rather prematurely, only in his 60s. Brand was a friend of my brother when they were both deans at U of Arizona (Brand was Dean of Social Sciences, my brother Dean of the College of Science), he fired Knight when he was later President of Indiana University, subsequently became Director of the NCAA. Brand died a few years ago from pancreatic cancer.