The Wrath of Bobby Knight Fans   

Out of the firestorm set off when the Indianapolis Star reported that Bobby Knight had been fired as Indiana University men's basketball coach, two responses burn in the mind of sports columnist Bill Benner.

After one caller left a message for Benner promising to make the Star building look like the Oklahoma City bombing, security at the newspaper was increased. But when another ended a stream of obscenities with a promise to do something unspeakable to his mother, Benner says even he was shocked at the depth to which Knight's supporters had descended.

"I'm telling you, these people are crazy," Benner says. "Of course you're affected by it. You can't be human and not be bothered by it. In May I told my wife if [Knight] gets canned we are going to have to be careful for a while."

Reporters who have covered Kosovo or the Colombia drug cartel might find it difficult to imagine peril in covering a college basketball program. They have never lived in Indiana.

Reporters and columnists for the state's biggest newspaper have been enmeshed in a bizarre ménage à trois with its readership and Coach Knight for almost 30 years. Examining the relationship goes a long way in explaining to bemused outsiders why it took so long for IU to dismiss Knight.

Benner is an Indiana graduate, a basketball fan and, in the 1970s when he covered Indiana University basketball, an admirer of Knight. Even then, Benner says, he knew there was trouble.

"Because I was an IU grad I knew a lot of the players, and they would tell me horror stories of how their experience at IU was miserable--some of the biggest names in IU basketball history," he says. "But they'd never tell me this on the record. I think they felt they had so much to lose and nothing to gain."

When he learned that a sports information director at the university had been knocked down by Coach Knight and refused to discuss it, Benner turned against Knight's program, he says.

After getting his column in the mid-1980s, Benner criticized Knight for benching all of his upperclassmen as a disciplinary measure in a pivotal 1984 loss to Illinois. He followed up in 1985 by pillorying Knight for his famous chair-throwing incident.

"From then on he started treating me poorly," Benner says. "It was clear even back then that you had to write in a very favorable manner or you would lose access."

Before veteran Terry Hutchens took over the beat in 1998, a parade of six writers in nine years struggled to cope with Knight's full court press. Knight met with reporters after games only, and then, he delivered a brief statement without taking questions, or taking questions only from handpicked reporters. Knight designated which players would speak after games, regardless of what had happened on the court. Practices were off-limits, and reporters were allowed to speak via a conference call to just one player a week for five minutes, as long as it wasn't on the day of a game, Hutchens says.

Hutchens made 53 oral and written requests through IU sports information and directly to Knight for a one-on-one interview. After more than a year on the beat, Knight agreed to meet with Hutchens for 10 minutes, he says. Knight actually gave Hutchens 45 minutes in early March and complimented him on his coverage.

Two weeks later, a videotape was released that showed Knight with his hand around former Indiana player Neil Reed's throat, causing the university to impose a "zero tolerance" policy on Knight's behavior. When Knight grabbed the arm of an Indiana freshman and lectured him on disrespect, the university announced that Knight had been flouting the policy all along and, on September 10, fired him.

The Star posted its lead story that Sunday afternoon on its Web site. The usual Sunday lead gets about 1,100 hits. The Knight story generated 24,000, says Tim O'Keeffe, online news editor.

The Star followed early in the week with a special section on the career of Bob Knight. A reader returned a copy to Editor Tim Franklin. "Scrawled on it was, 'I hope you Star people burn in hell for leading the crusade against my hero,' " Franklin says.

Most of the thousands of people who called and e-mailed the newspaper were angry at the paper for its "assassination" of Knight, Franklin says. No single response challenged the facts of any of the news stories, which had been agonizingly checked for balance. Readers simply detested the message, the editor says. "

The Knight story taught us two things," Franklin says. "That a newspaper's role is to pursue the truth as hard as you can despite the ringing in your ears and, two, that we need to pay scrupulous attention to fairness."

Benner calls any claim to having taken down the legendary basketball coach ridiculous. Rather than pride, he says he feels relief that a shameful era in his alma mater's history has passed.

And with it the Soviet system of covering Indiana basketball. Interim Coach Mike Davis has promised to be available to the press and has opened practices and the locker room to reporters, says Jeff Fanter, director of media relations for Indiana University's athletic department.

"I think it's safe to say we were the most restrictive program in the Big 10 and that where we were most restrictive was with Coach Knight," Fanter says. "Coach Davis feels it's important that the media be fully involved."

Hutchens couldn't be happier. "There was a time when you couldn't find anyone who wanted [my] job," he says. "They'd have to fight me for it now."