Robert Montgomery Knight

So Northeast Ohio native Bob Knight, the chair-throwing, student-assaulting, administrator-annoying coach who happens to have won more college basketball games than anyone else in history, has decided to hang up his whistle in the middle of his eighth season at Texas Tech.

It's amazing how many fellow basketball men are falling all over themselves to praise Knight on this, the occasion of his retirement. Much classier men like Mike Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino, Digger Phelps and Dick Vitale all have overwhelmingly positive things to say about Knight. And sure, I will concede that Knight is a very smart basketball man, and he held his players to very high standards on and off the court, which was surely good for them.

But he didn't hold himself to such high standards, certainly not in his behavior. During the process of him losing his job at Indiana, he (allegedly) grabbed a student ― not a basketball player ― by the lapel, and this was after a videotape surfaced that appeared to show Knight choking a player. You'd think he'd have learned to stop assaulting students. But apparently not.

How many times have we seen the clip of him throwing a chair onto the court when he didn't like the officiating? How can you justify that? And he's at times been unbelievably verbally abusive to reporters, officials, players and others. Have you seen the clip of him chewing out a sports information director for saying he wasn't going to show up at a press conference? Has Knight never made a mistake? He has never in his life apologized for his boorish behavior. He said at a rally in Indiana that he'd like to be buried upside-down, "so my critics can kiss my a-."

Well, Bob, I'm one of your critics, and no matter which way they bury you, I can assure you I will not kiss you anywhere.

Give Bob Knight his due ― he's a winner. He won 902 college basketball games and three national titles. And he's frequently entertaining and informative when he speaks. But he's a jerk.