A Season on the Brink is a very appropriate book to kick things off with. It fits all the criteria of what I want out of this undertaking. It details a prominent figure in a sport I am interested in in a time period I don't know too much about (the book was first published in the year I was born). The book is also the first of the "spend a year with a team/person" genre which is now extremely common (and I think it's important to check out the breakthrough/first of any genre to appreciate where everything that came after it originated from).
Also, for a little context, while I am aware of Bob Knights perfect college season and his various other accomplishments, by the time I was a college basketball fan (2001-ish after moving back from Australia), he was the coach at Texas Tech. So my impressions of Bob Knight were from the very tail end of his career as he piled up victories in pursuit of the all-time win record after his legacy was tainted by the incident which led to his Indiana coaching career. I saw his red-faced tirades and some other highlights on ESPN, but I didn't really get a chance to see him coach up his teams to a nationally prominent level and I don't equate Indiana to Bob Knight as much as Mike Davis and the scandals of Kelvin Sampson's era (especially when Sampson, the notoriously dirty recruiter, convinced Eric Gordon to go back on his verbal commitment to Illinois he made as a junior). So being taken back to a time when Indiana University was always relevant in the national conversation and Bob Knight was at the height of his powers filled in a lot of holes I have in my experience/knowledge.
I loved reading about players like Steve Alford (who I knew as the Iowa and then New Mexico coach), Keith Smart (the Golden state warriors coach), Scott Skiles (former Bulls and current Bucks' Coach), and briefly Sean Kemp (former Seattle SuperSonic and father of innumerable illegitimate children). It is great to read about the perception of these players at that age knowing how things eventually turn out for them. It was also great to be inside the locker room and at practice for a top tier college basketball team. Having grown up playing basketball, reading about the mid-season fatigue and one chilling cold of the playing during the winter months were things I could relate to and understand. But also to see things from the coaches standpoint was revealing. I loved seeing Bob Knight struggle to find the right buttons to push and his delight or frustration depending on how it worked. The amount of work Knight and his staff put in from watching tape to game planning to practicing to recruiting seemed incredible.
I thought Feinstein's game recaps left something to be desired. He often told the reader how things turned out in an abstract sense with a line like, "everything needed to go right for them to win the game, and today, it didn't seem like anything could go right." So he tended to kill the drama but then would retell the game story in all its twists and turns. I realize that the goal of the book wasn't meant to be a scrap book of a beat writer's game recaps, but I did feel like the games were the weakest part of the book, unless there was some particularly Knight good anecdote. I did love the games from the beat writer, Bob Hammel's perspective though. His reaction when things took a positive or negative turn were always great an very entertaining.
How different the media and competitive landscape is today from when it was back then was one of the most interesting parts of the book. Bob Knight could not survive in today's environment and I am not sure he would want to. His tirades directed at players/coaches/fans/administrators would lead sportscenter or be feature in scathing deadspin article's nearly every day. His altercations would be caught on camera phones and be youtube sensations overnight. His propensity for profanity and less than PC terms would offend massive numbers of people and he would refuse to back down or apologize for any of it. He didn't come across as racist, but I think growing up in rural Ohio definitely didn't provide a very diverse or open environment. Also his sexism which Feinstein addresses directly, would cause a massive sensation among equality groups. Not to mention his disdain for the media. If he though the media was stupid or terrible in the mid-80s, I think he would lose his mind today. That is not to say professionals in the industry aren't as good as ever, but now almost anyone can secure a press pass and number of people covering/attending a college basketball game has multiplied enormously since then (after being in locker rooms and post game press conferences I can safely say athletes and coaches are generally justified in their frustration over stupid questions).
All in all, it was a very interesting story and painted a pretty good picture of Bob Knight and the Indiana program. I felt like there were a few times you could read between the lines to some things Feinstein was not going to write about but witnessed as well as how the author felt about a few incidents along the way. I am looking forward to checking out other Feinstein books to get a better idea of his style and how he differs from other writers out there.
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