Hoosier Honor: Bob Knight and Academic Success at Indiana University

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.