Editor's Note: In this excerpt from "The Gospel According to ESPN: Saints, Saviors & Sinners" (Copyright 2002 by ESPN Inc.; published by Hyperion), Peter Carlson examines one of college basketball's fallen angels, former Indiana University coach Bob Knight.

Enraged, the students marched on the home of the university president, chanting obscenities. Along the way, they stopped traffic, tore down light posts, vandalized the sign on the campus art museum. Two thousand strong, they stormed the president's front lawn and burned him in effigy until cops in riot gear moved in, squirting mace. Why were the students so angry? Was it Vietnam? Racism? Apartheid?

No, it was an issue far more important to the average U.S. student -- intercollegiate sports. This wasn't Berkeley in the 1960s, it was Indiana University on Sept. 10, 2000, the day president Myles Brand fired basketball coach Bobby Knight.

The students were outraged: How could a mere college president remove a living legend?

In 29 years at Indiana University, Knight had led the Hoosiers to 661 wins, 11 Big Ten championships, three NCAA national championships.

He was a brilliant coach, but he was also a raging, foul-mouthed bully who'd made headlines for punching a player, fighting a cop, throwing a fan into a trash can, tossing a chair onto the court in the middle of a game. Needless to say, the winning outweighed the bullying. And Bobby Knight became a god in Indiana. Five months earlier, when he got in trouble for choking a player, students marched with signs that read: "The Lord Is My Shepherd and Knight Is My Coach."

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The religious language is telling: The Knight controversy was a classic example of a curious U.S. phenomenon -- the cult of the coach. For many Americans, a coach is a king, an emperor, an imperial ruler. In hundreds of U.S. towns, the high school coach is better known, more respected and frequently higher paid than the high school principal -- or even the mayor. In scores of U.S. colleges, the coach is far more powerful than the president, who is, after all, just a glorified professor.

In America, sport is the moral equivalent of war -- a nonviolent means of conquering one's neighbors -- and a winning coach has the status of a victorious general. It's a tough job that calls for a tough man. If he can win, the coach is not held to normal standards of conduct. He is expected, even encouraged, to be foul-mouthed, hot-tempered and brutal -- a drill instructor imposing iron discipline. Tales of his nastiness only add luster to his legend.

America's legendary coaches are stern, angry Olympian figures who become the objects of worshipful cults. George Blanda once described famous football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant thusly: "That must be what God looks like."

The mother of all mentors

Bob Knight may not fit the image of the perfect coaching mentor, but his proteges' accomplishments are irrefutable. Several of today's most successful Division I head coaches have direct ties to him. Though most have had rocky times with Knight, they still respect him. Mike Krzyzewski, Duke Record: 637-227 (career); three national championships. Coach K is Knight's prize pupil. He was recruited by Knight at West Point and assisted him at Indiana. Their relationship became strained after Duke defeated Indiana in the 1992 Final Four. In fact, Knight did not acknowledge Krzyzewski at the postgame press conference. The thaw began after Coach K picked Knight as his presenter for his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001. Don DeVoe, Navy Record: 499-346 (career); 10 NCAA tournament appearances. He was an assistant to Knight at Army and a teammate on national runner-up Ohio State in 1962. They have been friends for 40 years, sort of. Said DeVoe, "We don't talk that often-you only talk with Coach Knight when he wants to ... if there was ever anything I needed help with, though, he would be one of the first people I would call." Steve Alford, Iowa Record: 212-121 (career); two NCAA tournament appearances. He always seems to be in Knight's corner, even if the feeling isn't mutual. In 1987, Alford helped Knight win his last national title, but when he took over at Iowa as coach, Knight didn't call. At Alford's first Big Ten media day (for the 1999-2000 season), Knight didn't talk to Alford. However, Alford defended Knight after he was fired, although he was a top candidate to replace him. During a winter 2002 call made by Alford, the two mended what differences they had. Mike Davis, Indiana Record: 46-25, in two seasons; two NCAA Tournament appearances and one Final Four. He had been one of the least critical of Knight's former assistants, until the media got hold of Davis' comments in a deposition he made in former IU assistant Ron Felling's case against Knight. Davis called Knight a bully and criticized his communication methods toward anyone who disagreed with him. Dave Bliss, Baylor Record: 512-314 (career); 11 NCAA appearances. A member of Knight's original staff at Indiana, Bliss can thank Knight for his first job as head coach at Oklahoma in 1975. The two have only met once on the court-in the 2002 season when Texas Tech defeated Baylor -- so perhaps that's why their relationship has endured. Bliss has likened Knight to two of the most controversial figures in U.S. military history, Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.

It's odd: In democratic America, we are suspicious of authority. We demand that senators and even presidents obey the rules and act like regular guys. But coaches are encouraged to be arrogant, megalomaniacal tyrants. They seem to fulfill our secret inner need for a dictator.

Following in Woody's footsteps
But sometimes the little generals go too far. Or they stop winning. Or both. And then their imperial reign comes tumbling down. Bobby Knight should have known that. He watched it happen to one of his heroes -- Woodrow Hayes.

Hayes was a brilliant football coach at Ohio State, Knight's alma mater. In 28 years of coaching the Buckeyes, Hayes won 13 Big Ten championships and five national championships. He was nicknamed "Woody," but he ran his team like a general, and he loved to discourse on military history. "He never really forgave the world for making him a football coach instead of a field marshal," wrote sports columist Jim Murray. "Woody always hankered to capture Paris or destroy Carthage or cross the Alps on an elephant. When he couldn't, he'd settle for beating Michigan."

Hayes had a hot temper and quick fists. Over the years, he punched reporters, players, a cameraman, an assistant coach, a goal post. Then, in the Gator Bowl in 1978, he punched a Clemson player named Charlie Bauman who had the audacity to intercept a Buckeye pass in the final minutes of a close game.

That was too much. Like Truman confronting MacArthur, the president of Ohio State demanded his coach's resignation. Hayes refused to give it. "That would make it too easy for you," he said.

So the president fired him.

A few months later, at the College Football Hall of Fame, Hayes was given an award for his "outstanding contribution to character building."

Maybe Bobby Knight couldn't see his future in Hayes' downfall but The Indianapolis Star did. In 1997, the newspaper ran a cartoon that showed Knight gazing into a mirror only to see Woody Hayes staring back at him.

Knight was raised in Orrville, Ohio, the only child of a railroad freight agent and a teacher. At 6-foot-4, he was the star of his high school team, but when he got to Ohio State, he couldn't crack the starting lineup of the Buckeyes' championship team, which was led by future Celtics star John Havlicek. He hated sitting on the bench, and he complained so much that his coach, Fred Taylor, dubbed him "The Brat from Orrville."

He got a job coaching basketball at West Point and he whipped his cadets into winners, compiling a record of 102-50 in six seasons and beating Navy every year. But his hot temper made him controversial. "Even people at West Point would say, 'He's too tough on the cadets,' " he recalled later. "But why the hell shouldn't we be? I mean, you're watching Army playing in Madison Square Garden, you ought to think these guys are going to be able to go out and protect the country, too."

Indiana's basketball team was awful before Knight arrived, but he changed that quickly. He booted the spectators out of practices and ran his players through intense drills that left them gasping for air. He'd roll a ball on the floor and have three players dive for it. He'd toss it against the backboard and have three players fight for it.

It worked. The Hoosiers finished 17-7 in Knight's first year. In his second, they went 22-6 and won the Big Ten title. In 1975, the team finished 31-1, but that wasn't good enough for Coach Knight. He hung a sign in the locker room: "Kentucky 92, Indiana 90. Our Defense Was Responsible For This." The next year they went 32-0 and won the NCAA championship.

After that, Bobby Knight was a god in Indiana.

But he was a vengeful god, a butt-kicking Old Testament type god, quick to anger and eager to punish. He became at least as famous for his temper tantrums as he did for his championships.

In 1975, he threw a chair across the court during a loss to Purdue.

In 1977, he took off a shoe and banged it on the scorekeepers' table like Khrushchev at the UN.

In 1979, at the Pan American games in Puerto Rico, he got into a fistfight with a cop.

In 1981, he grabbed a heckling fan in a hotel lobby and threw him into a trash can.

In 1993, when his son Patrick made a bad pass in a game against Notre Dame, Knight yanked him off the court, pushed him into a chair and kicked him.

In 1994, he pulled an errant player out of a game against Michigan State, stood over him, screaming, and then head-butted him.

'My critics can kiss my ass'

	Bobby Knight became a tyrant because fans allowed him.

There were other incidents, too, plenty of others. Knight never apologized.

He never explained. He responded to all criticism with attacks on the critics. In 1994, at a pregame ceremony honoring his seniors, he recited a poem for the fans:

"When my time on earth is done and my activities here are past I want them to bury me upside down and my critics can kiss my ass."

Knight's aura of invincibility began to crack in March of 2000, when CNN aired a devastating documentary on the coach. It showed former Hoosier players describing how Knight had booted the college president out of a practice and how he'd once chastised his team by emerging from a bathroom with his pants around his ankles, wiping his butt with toilet paper, then showing the soiled paper to his team, saying, "This is how you guys are playing."

Even worse, a former Indiana player named Neil Reed charged that Knight had choked him during a practice. A week later, president Brand announced that he was launching an investigation of the coach. That brought Knight's critics out of hiding. A former assistant coach claimed that Knight had punched him. A university secretary recalled that he'd once thrown a potted plant against an office wall in a fit of temper, splattering her with shards of glass. And somebody leaked a vidoetape of the practice session in which Knight had choked Reed.

That was enough for Brand. In May, he suspended Knight for three games, fined him $30,000 and announced a "zero tolerance" policy on future misbehavior.

Four months later, Knight misbehaved again. On Sept. 7, 2000, Kent Harvey, a freshman standing in line to buy football tickets, spotted the famous coach and called out, "Hey, what's up, Knight?" At that point, according to Harvey and his friends, Knight grabbed the freshman by the arm, dragged him aside and said, "Show me some fucking respect. I'm older than you."

Knight claimed that all he'd done was gently touch the lad's elbow and offer some sage advice on the proper use of honorific titles: "My name to you is Coach or Mr. Knight, and you should remember that when you're dealing with elders."

Brand summoned Knight to a meeting. Knight said he couldn't make it -- he was scheduled to fly off on a fishing trip. Brand fired him. After that came the protests and the riot on the president's lawn. The controversy seemed to break down on ideological lines. Right-wing talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North defended Knight. Former presidents Bush and Ford sent him letters of support. Meanwhile, liberal cartoonist Garry Trudeau mocked the coach and his supporters in Doonesbury. And Bill Walton, the leftist former NBA star, wrote that Knight "psychologically terrorizes his players."

But none of that hindered his search for employment. Quite the contrary. In March of 2001, he was hired to coach basketball at Texas Tech. As Vince Lombardi used to say: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Excerpted with permission from "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ESPN: Saviors, Saints and Sinners" edited by Jay Lovinger. Copyright © 2002 ESPN, Inc. Published by Hyperion.