The Literary Divide/Dr. Paul Barrows
    A recent article in the Sports section of the Sunday paper profiled the debut of Pat Knight who recently was appointed head basketball coach at Texas
Tech University. Pat Knight is the son of the coach he replaced, the legendary Bobby Knight who had coached previously at Indiana University in
Bloomington. The story provided a very positive profile of the young and evolving coach, contrasting his amicable style with that of his bombastic and
arrogant father. Bobby Knight, in his interviews with the media, said he was “burned-out” and that “it was time to move aside.” This was not a case of
serendipity for his son Pat. This was a calculated strategy to basically hand-off the head coaching job to his son to “keep it in the family.”
    The article did not raise any issues whatsoever about the hiring process and related implications, treating this as a normal rights to passage. This is not
unusual. The leadership of our institutions of higher education, the mainstream media, both print and television, have tacitly turned a blind eye to this
tradition allowing it to continue uncritically. Put plain and simple, this is nothing more than nepotism. That was the case when Dick Bennett hired his son
Tony as his assistant at UW-Green Bay, UW-Madison, and The University of Washington where he succeeded his dad as head coach. That was also the case
when DePaul University coach Ray Meyer hired his son Joey who succeeded him as head coach at that institution.
    The issue is not whether or not they are good or even the best coaches. I actually have been a strong fan of both of the Bennetts. The issue is not so much
who did this as much as how this was done. There is a lot of duplicity in rhetoric and policies verses actual practices in terms of how colleges and universities
deal with this issue. One the one hand, they take the position that they believe in affirmative action, equal opportunity and that they practice clean and
transparent personnel policies and procedures. The reality, however, is that many of these nepotistic hires are done without a search process, very quickly and
quietly behind closed doors. When challenged to account for their actions, the institutional response goes something like this. The chancellors, presidents
and athletic directors say that intercollegiate athletics, particular at the Division I level, is so competitive and that the positions are so narrowly focused and
specialized that normal HR policies and procedures won’t suffice. Given that, they claim that they must operate like corporations do in the
private sector waiving the rules to make the process more efficient.
    The Black Coaches Association, headquartered in Indianapolis, has, rightfully so, taken strong positions against nepotism and related practices. They
have argued that these practices are illegal and immoral and that they have most often been used to the detriment of African American coaches. If the
search and screen processes used by colleges and universities is desperately in need of overhaul and streamlining, then why not address that instead of using
it as an excuse to avoid doing a fair and clean search. A full and legitimate search process will give all a fair chance to compete and will actually put the
appointee in a stronger moral position. The practice of allowing coaches to hire their sons as their assistants needs to be discontinued. It puts the son in a
difficult position; and it puts the other assistant coaches in an even more untenable position for fear of retaliation if they are critical of the son’s performance.
NCAA: Nepotism in coaching across America?