I’ve always had a soft spot for Bob Knight. A pompous jerk, to be sure, but one of the more intelligent and interesting personalities in sports. Tuesday night before the North Carolina – Kentucky game the ESPN college basketball crew (Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Digger Phelps, Hubert Davis, and Knight) was joking around about Obama practicing with the Tar Heels during a recent campaign stop in Chapel Hill. Obama claimed, in a taped interview, that he had almost scored on National Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough. Hubert Davis said he was at that practice and Obama never came close (and shot 0-for-9 from the field). Knight’s response (I’m paraphrasing): Hubert, do you realize you’re talking about a guy who, on January 21, can pick up the phone and make you disappear?

Everybody laughed, but I thought to myself, who else in American public life could someone say something like that without being fired or worse?