March of the Pansies:

The yelling over the recent Bob Knight non-incident continues unabated.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was formerly a respected newsreader on ESPN before he decided to try his hand at real news and become the joke of the industry. Never missing an opportunity to make an ass of himself, he awarded Knight his nightly "Worst Person in the World" honor. On the other hand, Olbermann's program gets the worst ratings in the world, so it's not as though people are paying attention to him.

The Knight story was like a kick in the ovaries to FoxSports.com's Jeff Goodman.

This blogger - I don't know what the hell this blogger is all about. I can say with confidence that the future of Knight-centric journalism is in good hands, what with the ad hominem attacks and outright lies that his post "Bob Knight ... Need I Say More?" contains. I'd like him to detail Knight's "extreme violence" (!) - especially, but not limited to, that "toward opposing players." (!!!) Moreover, I can also point out that plagiarism is still alive and well, seeing as how the blogger lifted directly the AP-created list of Knight "controversies" that I linked to a couple of days ago, and passed it off as his own. Nice work!

The Chicago Sun-Times' Jay Mariotti stepped into the restroom for a moment, powdered up and shat out this masterpiece, in which he opens with, "Sorry to oppose the twisted mentality of his nationwide defense team ..." The arrogance of the media is astounding, and no finer example exists than in that line. You know why he has a "nationwide defense team," Jay? Because they're all common folks just like me, and they're tired of the constant haranguing of Knight in the media - and you're the media, Jay, given your position at the Sun-Times and frequent appearances on ESPN's "Around The Horn." This isn't Jay Mariotti's one-man crusade against Knight - this is Jay Marriotti in an echo chamber, part of a big sportswriter circle-jerk.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated's Phil Taylor adds absolutely nothing to the argument other than to drag out the tired old timeworn "bully" argument. In case you weren't aware that he thinks Knight is a bully, he titled his article, "A Big Bully." You can expect that later, Taylor will pen a thought-provoking piece titled "9/11 Was Bad."

Really, I could go on and on. But you get the gist. Sports journalists, many of whom couldn't cut it covering real news but are still inspired by the ghosts of Woodward and Bernstein, turn to the sports world for targets to pursue. A lot of them are bitter, failed ex-athletes who got cut from their junior varsity wrestling team because they just weren't tough enough, and they've held a grudge against men like Coach Knight ever since. Sure, there are some good sportswriters - usually the ones without agendas are the ones you can trust - but by and large, you can post a dozen of them on eBay and still not get a dollar out of them.