Bob Cook

When Mike Davis steps down as Indiana’s basketball coach after this once-promising, now-miserable season ends, he should call Gene Bartow and commiserate over what it’s like to replace a legend. Then the coach named to succeed Davis should call Gary Cunningham and commiserate over what it’s like to replace the guy who replaced a legend. Then the coach named to succeed the coach who succeeded Davis should call Larry Brown and commiserate over what it’s like to replace the guy who replaced the guy who replaced a legend. Then the coach... (continue to infinity).

Oh, Davis isn’t gone yet, but he will be at the end of the season. When he does go, it will confirm what has been clear throughout his six-year tenure succeeding Bob Knight — Indiana University basketball fans and administrators have Woodenized their favorite team’s coaching job.

Woodenization refers to the process in which a head-coaching job at a presumably top-tier, desirable program becomes toxic in the rare air of a fan base and leadership that tolerates nothing less than that coach winning championships, producing great players, walking little old ladies across the street, healing lepers, etc., like the god of the clipboard that once walked the sideline.

The Wooden in this, of course, is John Wooden, the avuncular legend with the 10 championships in 12 years in the 1960s and 1970s. His eight successors have combined for one title since 1975, though it doesn’t take just that number for UCLA fans to remind whomever is the coach that he’s no John Wooden. Winning a title, by the way, is no guarantee you’ve de-Woodenized a job — it just means the jackals are held at bay for one year. I’m looking at you, Mack Brown (Texas football, Darrell Royal) and Roy Williams (North Carolina basketball, Dean Smith.)

Knight added a new twist to Woodenizing a job — martyrdom. Since Knight was fired in September 2000 for violating a zero-tolerance temper clause by reacting angrily to a student who addressed him, “Hey, Knight,” the current Texas Tech coach has not let go. Knight sued the school for letting him go (later dropping the case), and during last season’s NCAA tournament, he tweaked his successor and former assistant Davis, saying that he probably would have fired him had he stayed at Indiana. This, of course, was red meat for the hardest core of the Knight-loving, Davis-haters, the ones who Davis says have made his life, and his team’s morale, miserable.

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Certainly, Davis himself hasn’t helped matters by his constant ability, while skating on thin ice, to take an auger and drill holes along the way. During a recent Big Ten coaches teleconference, he surmised Indiana fans wanted a local (Davis is from Alabama) to coach the team and pointed out that other Big Ten schools don’t have the home fans ripping them. He also was blasé about the site of the Big Ten tournament: “Well, that doesn’t really matter to me.” Wouldn’t there be an advantage to having it at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis? “Uh, no. Not that I can think of.”

Davis, a heretofore unknown assistant and former minor-league player who was promoted suddenly to the head job after Knight’s firing, has always appeared to be in over his head when it comes to handling the pressure of coaching at a big-time program. After a quick start that included defeats of nemesis Kentucky and defending Big Ten champion Illinois, Davis and Indiana collapsed — physically and mentally — once forward and reigning Big Ten Freshman of the Year D.J. White broke his foot a second time. (Indiana is 5-0 with White, 8-8 without him.) That culminated with Davis’ curious decision to sit out a home loss against Iowa because of “flu-like symptoms,” a game in which particularly disgruntled fans wore black shirts in protest of Davis’ continued employment.

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Black was chosen, organizers said, because Indiana had encouraged fans to wear white (a team color) to games. Probably not a good choice, though, when racism has come up as an issue as to why Davis in particular is being Woodenized. Davis himself has not been shy in believing race has been a factor in why some Indiana fans have never embraced him. The Indianapolis Star reported that Floyd Keith, the executive director of the Black Coaches Association and a former Indiana assistant football coach, contacted Indiana athletic director Rick Greenspan to say he was troubled by the racial implications of the protest.

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