Hoosier Honor: Bob Knight and Academic Success at Indiana University

by Robert P. Sulek

Overview

College student-athletes are often a study of failure—a failure in graduation, in setting priorities, in having dreams fulfilled. Over 65 percent of all college athletes might not graduate. Only a handful of NCAA schools combine excellent basketball with a consistent level of graduation. One aim of this book is to help current college athletes to graduate by documenting a success story—Indiana University. The volume does not focus on Indiana's basketball success but instead its academic success under the seventeen-year tenure of Coach Knight. The author first details the failure of present sports programs in low graduation levels, abuse and exploitation of athletes, and in spirit and philosophy. He then explores what is described as Coach Knight's hard-love, and the people and processes involved in the Indiana program. This volume addresses athletic administrators, educators, athlete-students, and their fans.

Written in a light and sensitive style, Hoosier Honor tells the success story of the Indiana University basketball team under Coach Bob Knight. The most winning coach in the Big Ten Conference, Knight's greatest success is his ability to graduate an extremely high percentage of his players. This volume documents that success: the success of a man who knows that defense wins games; a man with limitations who learned to compensate and trains his team to compensate; a teacher and a mentor. Voices of those around Coach Knight are finally heard and a psychological analysis of Knight and the Dostoyevsky-type double internal struggle is present in Knight's hard-love of the players. The IU program is a model one—philosophical approach to basketball.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275934477
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/23/1990
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

ROBERT PAUL SULEK is Rector of the Honors College at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC. Recently graduated from Harvard University with a Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration and Social Policy. Having taught mathematics and coached basketball at both the high school and college levels, his lifelong driving force is the moral, social, and ethical issues behind basketball. Currently he works as Rector of the Honors College at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC.

Table of Contents

Introduction
An Indiana Player
Genesis of the Study: The Problem
Bobby Knight
Elizabeth "Buzz" Kurpius
Case Study of Jay Edwards
Hard-Love
Postscript to Jay Edwards
The UI Record and Comparisons
Conclusion
A Memory of Childhood
Appendix: List of Interviewees
Selected Bibliography
Index