For all the stuff he ended up getting fired for. After all the stuff he was allowed to get away with for decades at IU. At some point, enough is enough. And IU got to that point. It wasn't that Brand, or IU, wanted to deemphasize IU basketball, I'm sure. It was that they wanted their highest profile coach to stop acting like a lunatic. If Brand was gunning for Knight, he would have fired him immediately when the Reed stuff came out. That was an easy, justifiable, opportunity for him to make that move...if its something he was "just waiting for". Knight is the one that normalized irrational behavior.
My views of Knight did change after one of our encounters (mid 90's, can't remember exact year, summer of 94 or 95, I believe) I was working at a golf course as a cart attendant. Knight was buddies with one of the members at our course, and he was coming to play in an outing. I was in high school, and everyone knew how much I loved IU basketball. I defended RMK to the non IU fans. I went on and on and on about Cheaney, Bailey, Henderson, etc... So when he showed up that morning, the club pro arranged that I would be the one to get Knight's bag from him, show him where his locker was going to be, basically get him anything he might need or want. He rode to the course with the member, when he got out of the car I was there to meet both of them. The member introduced us, told him I was a big IU fan. Not one word from Coach. No big deal, he probably gets annoyed with fans all the time. I put his clubs on the cart with the member. The pro and the member talk with him and the pro notices Coach has hard spikes. He says to me, while we're all standing together, "take Coach in to the locker room, and have the locker room attendant change his spikes to soft spikes while he's getting ready." Coach says, "I hate ****ing soft spikes." And shakes his head. I lead him in to the locker room, show him his locker, and take his shoes to get the spikes changed. I stayed with the attendant while he was doing it. The attendant was going to throw his hard spikes away because some of them were worn almost down to the plastic. But I stopped him, and asked him to put them in a plastic bag, and that we'd let RMK decide what to do with them. When I took him his shoes, he was off somewhere else in the locker room, so I set his golf shoes down and put the plastic bag of his hard spikes on top of his shoes. I walked out and milled around by his cart waiting for him to come out. A few minutes later I hear him yelling about something as he's coming out of the pro shop. He sees me and B-lines my way, actual RMK full on red face. "Where are my ****ing spikes? You throw them away? Steal them? I hate ****ing soft spikes, so you better come up with my spikes!" As calmly as my teenager psyche could muster..."I put them in a baggie on top of your shoes." "No you didn't! Go ****ing get them then." So I did. And they were sitting on the floor where his shoes had been. I brought them back and gave them to him. Not a word one way or another from him. A normal human being would maybe try to lighten the mood a little bit, if not apologize. But he just threw them in to the cubby in his cart and walked off toward the putting green.
I can't fathom how many interactions like that people in the IU buildings had to deal with over the years.
Great coach. For some people, great person. By all accounts he was generous with his money. And for his closest friends, and for a long list of his players that were able to endure him, they love him because he did mold them in to better players and probably better people. I get all that.
But he was an unnecessary asshole. And society and times changed. And it was no longer a tenable situation.
Despite that encounter, I remained an adamant IU supporter. My views on RMK had been fundamentally changed. But I still rooted for him and IU. And I still think its a shame it had to end the way it did.