Bob Knight on How Good UConn Women’s Coach Gino Auriemma Is

Question on SportsCenter today: “He has 6 national titles, what are your thoughts on what Hall-of-Famer Gino Auriemma has done with this program?”

Bob Knight: “I’ve said in the past, that if I were an athletic director looking for a basketball coach — I don’t care whether the team was going to be made up of men, women, Eskimos, dogs, whatever — I’d want to talk to Gino Auriemma about coaching. Because I think he’s just as good a coach as there is anywhere today coaching anything.”

I don’t have nearly enough training in psychology to know what exactly was happening in his brain during this answer. The interview was by phone and I presume not live. So what was going on in the minds of the ESPN brain-trust when they decided to air a remark that seemed somehow to rank “Eskimos” (or as they call themselves, Inuit) somewhere between women and dogs? Where were the folks who sent Tony Kornheiser to his room for two weeks after he questioned Hannah Storm’s fashion sense.