In General, Tactless

Dave Bliss, a former assistant men’s basketball coach to Bob Knight at West Point, told this story on the “General” to Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

It was in the late 1960s, and Knight’s West Point gang of young assistant coaches from all the sports at the U.S. Military Academy had just finished a game of very rough pickup basketball.

On leaving the gym on this particular day, the weary group noticed a young female jogger huffing and puffing her way up a hill.

“Look at her,” Knight said. “No matter how hard she tries, she’ll never lose that fat.”

“I know,” answered Bill Parcells, then an Army assistant football coach, “that’s my wife.”

There’s always the anti-Bob

Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star suggests that Utah’s Rick Majerus should replace Knight as Indiana University’s basketball coach.

“Majerus is the antithesis of Knight: a big, cuddly bear of a guy who has a closet filled with oversized red sweaters. He would make Assembly Hall a happy place again, not just by winning, but by infusing the program with joy.

“There is life after Bob Knight. There is a good life after Bob Knight. This is not the end of anything. This is just a beautiful and exciting new beginning.”

It almost brings tears to your eyes.

Man, what a headache

In a column in the New York Post in 1968, Larry Merchant wrote: “The star of the New York (Knicks) press stands 6-9, has a wall-to-wall wingspan, reads Albert Camus and doesn’t have to worry about editors cutting his best lines. He is Phil Jackson.”

“(He) is where the action is. He roams about like a Giacometti sculpture on roller skates, a jangle of limbs in motion.”

Struggling in the pennant race

Boston pitcher Bret Saberhagen, volunteering to pitch in pain if general manager Dan Duquette were to ask:

“I’m kind of the horse, and he’s the jockey. It depends on how he wants to whip me … but I don’t want to be glue in the near future.”

One of those Olympic moments

Bernie Lincicome, writing in the Rocky Mountain News:

“My most memorable Olympic event came in Calgary after the men’s figure skating event won by Brian Boitano.

“Boitano is dressed in his bellhop costume, waiting to receive his gold medal. The national anthem begins to play. Tears begin to fill Boitano’s left eye. And someone in the press box, overcome with American pride, blurts out. `Please, don’t let him cry. It will ruin his makeup.’

“I’ve been told it was me.”

The last word …

“There has been bad blood since the trade of Babe Ruth. The two cities can’t even agree on what color clam chowder should be.”

- “Monday Night Football” executive Don Ohlmeyer, to the Boston Globe on the New York-Boston rivalry.