I think something needs to be done about officiating in college basketball. We have guys that work seven games a week. That's impossible. Absolutely impossible. Officiating takes great concentration. I'm tired after a game -- physically and emotionally tired because of the concentration I have to put into it. The official has to put in the same concentration I do, plus he's running up and down the floor. And I've said forever there should be an absolute limit of three games per week, and that's one game too many. I think we have a serious problem with officiating. They just work from Hawaii to New York.

The whole thing about recruiting, I see too many times when a guy is hired because he brings a kid. Or an AAU guy comes and speaks to a camp. Well, he doesn't know his ass from third base about basketball, and he's being given $5,000, and the whole idea is that when you have a kid that somebody wants -- who's paid you $5,000 to come to camp?

SN: A lot of people who know you have suggested you might not be finished coaching. At this point, do you have any desire to get back?

KNIGHT: Abe Lemons once told me, "Never say never." And I haven't. If the right opportunity came -- and the right opportunity would have to be determined by me -- I would not in anyway preclude the possibility of coaching again.

At the time [I left Indiana], I really didn't know whether I would coach [again] or not. And then Gerald Myers called. And it was intriguing. They (Texas Tech) had won, I think, 11 games in the previous four years in the Big 12. And I thought, "Well, that'd be interesting. What can we do with it? Or can we do anything with it?" And we weren't great, but we were pretty good. In the first four years, I think we beat 43 conference opponents, in the tournament and the regular season. So we took it from 11 to 43. And we played in the NCAA four times. And so I really got a kick out of that.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Pain on the skating rink, flying high on the hardwood, upsets on the football field, and more. more photos

Indiana, as an example, had been there before and had a long history with basketball and then had kind of fallen on bad times. All we did was change that a little bit. At West Point, when we started there, basketball at Army wasn't any different than any other sport. There was football, and everybody else. And I think in that eight-year period we went to the NIT six times and played in the semifinal game five times. I think we elevated the importance of basketball and we did something in basketball, in terms of it representing the Academy, that hadn't been done before.

So those were things that I enjoyed from one place to another.

SN: What sort of things would you look for in another job?

KNIGHT: You look at Texas Tech when I went there, and you say to yourself, "Can we win there?" And I had to say, "I don't know." Because they hadn't been [a winning program]. At this point, however, I would have to look at a team and I'd say to myself, "Can we win there?" And I'd have to know that we could, that this is a situation where it would probably, obviously, be the last time that I coached. And I would want a chance -- because of the geographical location or the history or the combination thereof -- I would want to make sure that there was a chance.

MORE FROM COLLEGE BASKETBALL

College basketball Section Front

No. 6 Purdue survives No. 9 Vols in a thriller Beyond the Arc: A ranked showdown that delivered   No. 3 Longhorns beat Iowa in CBE title game Cincy starts fast, upends No. 24 Vandy in Maui Gonzaga rallies past Colorado Beyond the Arc: 'Cuse can't get better ... or can it? Syracuse jumps to No. 10 in latest AP poll UConn still No. 1 in AP women's basketball poll Beyond the Arc: 5 things to watch this week SCarolina F Archie out indefinitely with hurt knee College basketball Section Front   Add College basketball headlines to your news reader: