Oh don't deny it... whichever side of the fence you're on in regards to Bob Knight, he was both. A coaching genius to be sure, doing more with less than perhaps anyone in the history of the sport, and only a shade behind John Wooden as the greatest college hoops coach ever. Those accolades are, of course, open to debate. The fact that he was a jerk is not. There were too many incidents of finger-jabbing, chair-throwing, player-kicking, ref-badgering, media-insulting and general surliness to even begin to suggest otherwise. And that is a real shame. You take all that bad attitude away, and you've got a Dean Smith, a Mike Kryzewski, or even better, because the basketball talent in America flows nowhere more generously than to Durham and Chapel Hill. It certainly doesn't flow to Lubbock, but Knight nevertheless managed to coax five 20-win seasons out of the six full campaigns he had on the South Plains.

This eternal contradiction was fully evident even to the last. His undeniable coaching brilliance was on full display in what was essentially Knight's swan song, the 900th win of his career. A stunning upset of then 10th-ranked Texas A&M put him where no other men's basketball coach had ever gone. And then, of course, Knight proceeded to berate the fans for not turning out in similar numbers for EVERY Tech game. The coaching yin forever entwined with the jerky yang...

Milestone reached, Knight was a shell of his former self by the time I saw him coach against Texas in Austin. He put in his two cents here and there during the game, but appeared worn down and disinterested as the Longhorns won convincingly. You could tell the end was near.

So the General retires with his records, championships, and the legions of former players that continue to revere the man they say made them the players, coaches, general managers, leaders and so on that they all became. But no one can deny the unfortunate fact that a great coach and, by all accounts, generous and anonymous benefactor to numerous charities, will go down as such a tempermental bully to many who follow sports, and worse, even to those who don't.