MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / June 10, 2000

It is ironic that John Rocker and Bobby Knight have been two of the biggest stories in recent months. Though they are generations apart age-wise,they are indeed two peas in a pod.

Both Rocker and Knight have been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, Rocker for his remarks in Sports Illustrated and its subsequent fallout and Knight for his investigation after former player Neil Reed claimed the coach choked him in 1997. Both are temperamentalpersonalities, time bombs that their teams have been willing to overlook because of past successes.

Knight has led Indiana to three national titles and 11 Big Ten championships. The only thing more impressive than his record on thecourt is his record off of it. Here is a coach who has shoved players andfans, belated officials and tournament workers and threw a vase near an athletic department secretary.

For 29 years, his employers, Indiana University, have managed to avoid severely punishing Knight for his actions. Even after the recentallegations, the university took the easy road out, suspending Knight for three games, fining him $30,000 and enacting a “zero tolerance” policy. Ateacher slapping Knight on the wrist with a ruler could have hurt him more.

The same goes for Rocker who saved 38 games for the Braves last season, helping the team advance to the World Series. When he made his offensiveremarks about foreigners and minorities in the offseason, baseball suspended him for a month, a suspension later shortened to 14 days after an appeal by the Player’s Association. After threatening the SportsIllustrated reporter who wrote the story revealing those comments, Rocker was fined $5,000 by the Braves and sent down to Triple A Richmond.

But one has to wonder if things would have been different had Knight and Rocker been more successful this season. Rocker was reportedly sentdown, not as a punishment, but to work on his control. He had walked 25batters in 18 1/3 innings this season and had trouble closing out games.

And if the Hoosiers had won the National Championship this season, would as big a deal have been made about the latest allegations against Knight? And one has to wonder why their respective organizations put up with Knight and Rocker. Is Indiana so insecure that it feels it could not contendfor national titles with Knight? The Hoosiers were a successful program before he even came around, winning titles in. The Braves were in thepostseason from 1991-98 without Rocker, winning the World Series in 1995. Mark Wohlers saved 97 games from 1996-97 and Kerry Ligtenberghad 30-plus saves in 1998 so it’s not like they have been struggling to find closers lately.

There are many in the Indiana system who are tired of Knight casting a dark shadow on the university with his actions. Ditto for the Braves.Rocker is reportedly extremely disliked by his teammates. Brian Jordanwent so far as to call Rocker a cancer on the team.

Rocker is overshadowing a number of great stories on the Braves this season, including Andres Galarraga’s return from cancer and the emergence of Rafael Furcal. Atlanta has the best record in baseball andmay have its best all-around team during its decade of winning. Yet,everywhere the team goes, it falls second to Rocker, either by his being mooned by a fan in Los Angeles or his confrontation with Cub fans in Chicago. And the worst was probably yet to come with the Braves stillhaving to go to New York.

One of the biggest complaints that his teammates had about Rocker was while the rest of the team wanted to put the offseason incident behind them, he couldn’t. The same can be said for Knight. Both have had a chanceto be remembered for other things, Rocker for being one of the best relievers in the game and Knight for his success and his charitable works.

Unfortunately, both have thrown that away as easily as Knight once did a chair on the court. It’s time for that to be put to a stop. The Major Leaguedraft showed this week that there are thousands of other players who would love to play in the big leagues. There are hundreds of coaches outthere who would give anything to be in Knight’s place.

It’s time for those players and coaches to be given a chance and for the Knights and Rockers of the world to be shown that their actions will not be tolerated anymore no matter their past records.

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