As someone who covered Bob Knight’s tumultuous last two seasons at Indiana University, I was fortunate enough to speak with John Feinstein a few times.
He once told me that people often asked him if he hated Knight. With typical Feinstein wit, he responded: “Why would I hate him? He helped pay for my house.”
A Season on the Brink is as much a part of Indiana sports lore as the players’ candy-striped warm-up pants. Feinstein’s exploration of the Hoosiers’ 1985-86 season is the most iconic nonfiction work associated with college basketball. It’s on the shortlist of the greatest sports books of all time. It turned Feinstein into a star at a time when there weren’t that many celebrity sports journalists.
With Feinstein’s recent passing, that book is his legacy.
You couldn’t do a book like Season on the Brink today. College sports have gotten so big and so sensitive that no athletic department would allow someone of Feinstein’s stature to have yearlong access, especially to someone so politically incorrect and volatile like Knight. Most of what we get now from coaches occurs in highly controlled atmospheres. It’s the illusion of access. Some exceptional reporters break stories and unveil fascinating details. But precious few were as dogged as Feinstein, who revealed Knight, warts and all, to the public.
In hindsight, it’s astounding that Feinstein got Knight to agree to do this in the first place. Coaches are notoriously reticent to allow the media into their inner sanctum: practices, locker rooms, and lives. Perhaps Knight, who—believe it or not—could be charming at times, thought the book would be flattering, emphasizing his acumen and leadership while downplaying his acerbic nature. Feinstein, however, showed Knight for who he truly was: a basketball genius who was also a hot-tempered bully.
Not surprisingly, Knight hated the depiction. However, the public loved the book.
What made it so compelling was that the 1985-86 squad was not a great team. Those Hoosiers went 21-8, 13-5 in the Big Ten and lost in their NCAA tournament opener to Cleveland State. The challenging season made for terrific stories, and the book’s popularity increased when Indiana won the national championship the following year.
Feinstein, who later said the book sold two million copies, was no longer “just” a sports reporter. He became a nationally recognized author. A Season on the Brink led to ESPN appearances. His book became a movie starring Brian Dennehy as Knight. Feinstein, who wrote 23 New York Times bestsellers, showed other newspaper reporters what was possible—that you could take ownership of your career and write about the subject matter you cared about the most. This type of storytelling freedom is what journalists crave. Feinstein achieved it through his relentless energy and fearless reporting.
He was one not to be bullied, even by the most famous coaching bully of them all.
Feinstein enjoyed a different career from his more well-known former Washington Post colleagues. Like Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, he was a regular on The Sports Reporters. However, while Kornheiser and Wilbon achieved maximum fame and pay with Pardon the Interruption, Feinstein excelled in another medium. He wasn’t the first newspaperman to transition to books, but he certainly perfected the switch. Plus, what bolstered Feinstein’s credibility was his occasional writing for the Post. He filed what turned out to be his final column for the newspaper right before he died.
At his core, he was a newspaperman to the end.
Much has changed in journalism, most of it not for the better. Feinstein’s death is a loss because he embodied the best of it. He pursued subjects that intrigued him and invested his time and energy into accurately sharing those stories. He was a reporter’s reporter, and that’s the highest compliment you can give someone in the industry.
