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And few purists would argue that over the years watching the Hoosiers play hasn't been a delight. The unselfish IU five weave their way through a double-screen offense that rewards patience and smarts, two things in short supply at many run-and-gun schools where discipline has been replaced by coddling, as coaches work furiously to pamper their star players hoping they'll remain on campus for at least two years before jumping to the NBA.

You'll see no shin-length shorts on Knight players or bodies blanketed with tattoos. At Indiana there's a reason players' names are still nowhere to be found on the back of their jerseys; it's a team effort. And for a young fan like myself growing up in Indiana, worshipping the Cream and Crimson, staying up late on weeknights to watch the Hoosiers finish off Purdue, Michigan or Ohio State, and spending arctic snow days shoveling outdoor courts in order to play 3-on-3, it was impossible not to worship Knight and relish his team's aura of excellence and invincibility.

But recently, win or lose, it's been painful to watch the Hoosiers go through their joyless motions on the court, with players seemingly motivated more out of fear of Knight's potential wrath, than love of the game. (Perhaps that's why so few IU stars cut it in the NBA; Knight seems to sap their passion for the game and creativity.) And with yet another late-season collapse, it seems the yearlong mental strain Knight unleashes has become too much for even some of the most talented and dedicated student athletes to endure.

The problem for Knight (aka The General) isn't that he's simply a throwback to another era when tough guys prowled the sidelines, demanding respect and spraying the court with profanity. Watch University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins on TV and lip-read the "fucks" that fly out of his mouth. You think workouts with him are pleasant? And look at Temple University's John Chaney, another old-school disciplinarian known to drag players in for pre-dawn practices following disappointing losses the night before.

Chaney, like Knight, refuses to change his ways simply to accommodate today's modern athlete and is justifiably proud of the type of men his system molds. And like Knight, Chaney once publicly embarrassed his university when he let his anger run wild. It happened during a 1994 post-game press conference when Chaney physically attacked the young, cocky University of Massachusetts basketball coach, John Calipari, who had unlocked Temple's mysterious matchup zone defense and made a habit of beating Temple teams year in and year out. Unlike Knight though, Chaney quickly, and passionately, apologized to his players, to his school and to Calipari. Chaney has since resumed his role as Temple's most respected public ambassador.

Increasingly, Knight's been unable to see the value of public or private contrition, which may explain the player exodus. Since 1995, nine players have transferred to other schools, including such Indiana household names as native son Luke Recker and high school All-American, 7-foot center Jason Collier. Almost all of the nine cited Knight's abusive behavior as the reason for their exit.

The coach insists the team's transfer rate is lower than the national average. But that's when Knight looks at his 29-year run at IU, not since the floodgates opened in '95. (Because Division I athletes must sit out a year when they transfer, the move is not taken lightly, and it's almost unheard of for high-profile, All-American recruits to jump ship.)

Rather than address the problem, Knight and the university have simple hunkered down. Just look at how the two teamed up and responded to the troubling CNN/Sports Illustrated piece, which included on-camera interviews from former players who transferred, such as Neil Reed, who claimed Knight choked him.

Also interviewed was Richard Mandeville, a player who never left IU but claimed that one day at practice Knight emerged from a bathroom stall, pants around his ankles, brandishing dirty toilet paper and insisting that was how the team was playing. Despite the fact that Knight declined several interview requests from CNN/Sports Illustrated (Amazingly IU's president declined to be interviewed based solely on the fact that Knight had refused; who's running that university?), that didn't stop Knight or the university from spinning furiously, even before the report aired.

Calling a news conference in hopes of mounting a preemptive strike against the report, IU basketball flack Todd Starowitz, suffering from a warped sense of self-importance, suggested cryptically that CNN/Sports Illustrated producers had been carrying around a Knight grudge for years, just waiting for the right time to unleash it on the public: "People involved in the piece had it out for coach Knight for upwards of 15 years, back actually to when Indiana played North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament in 1984," he reported.

That wasn't the worst of it. At the same briefing, when asked about criticism by tenured Indiana University English and American studies professor Murray Sperber ("I call Knight the emperor of Indiana"), Starowitz simply answered, "I don't know who he is." What a shock.

But the wagons were just beginning to circle. Soon a letter was being passed out to members of the press. It was written by a mother of a Knight basketball camper who complained that Reed had once used profanity when dealing with her son five years ago. More dirt? How about freshly Xeroxed copies of old press accounts that described how Mandeville was allowed to return to the team after an "alcohol-related incident prior to his senior season." (Again, Rudy would be proud.)

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