Happy Birthday to the Bob Knight Chair Toss

Twenty-six years ago today, Bobby Knight had a bad day at the office. The hated Purdue Boilermakers were visiting Bloomington to take on Knight's Indiana Hoosiers in the latest installment of the heated rivalry between these two storied basketball programs. The NCAA Tournament was just a couple of weeks away, and while Purdue was looking like a good bet to get in, IU was struggling along. This was still a couple of years before Steve Alford and Keith Smart helped Knight hang his last national championship banner in the rafters of venerable Assembly Hall. All of which is to say, tensions were high.

As the game began, it was clear that Indiana was going to struggle, and the Boilers jumped out to an early 11-2 lead. Knight's young players were a bit overwhelmed and began fouling the Gene Keady's team left and right. Predictably, Coach felt that the right calls were not being made by the officiating crew, so he started jawing at the referees. Knight's rage finally reached its boiling point when Indiana's Daryl Thomas was called for a foul during a loose-ball scramble. Knight, feeling that a jump ball was called for, began a red-faced rant laced with profanity that continued until ref Fred Jaspers slapped the Indiana coach with a technical foul. Knight promptly marched to the Indiana bench, where he found a beautiful red plastic chair that would become his partner in his little dance with history.

That's when Knight reared back and launched the chair across the court, just as Purdue's Steve Reid was lining up at the free-throw line. The chair skidded and skittered, twisted and turned across the gym floor and towards the wheelchair seating on the other side of the arena from Knight. It's physical momentum eventually petered out, but its metaphorical mojo carried it across the sports firmament until its little silver legs dug into our our memory banks, cementing forever Knight's infamy as a Grade-A, hotheaded jerk. And that's the rose-colored viewpoint from an Indiana fan who continues to long for the glory days under The General.

Knight's vitriol did little to light a fire under his charges, as the Hoosiers lost the game to Purdue, 72-63, en route to missing March Madness altogether. Indiana would have to settle for an NIT run that took them to the pinnacle of being crowned the 65th best college team in the land before losing the final game the UCLA. Bet THAT was a fun trip back to Bloomington from Madison Square Garden!