The Lasting Effects of Dane Fife, aka The Slow, Agonizing Fall of Mike Davis

Being a non-Hoosier resident of Hoosierland (I'm Indiana born and bred but Purdue educated) I have what equates to a foreigner's perspective of the sad and now final demise of Coach Mike Davis. It's absolutley amazing to see the fire and furvor that Indiana basketball fans bring to Davis's doorstep. Soon enough Hoosiers will stop calling any social miscreant a terrorist for the much more maligning, "Screw you, ya no-good Davis."

It'll take only one viewing of Hoosiers or one chat session with John Wooden to understand that the state of Indiana has been loving the roundball quite possibly longer than any other locality. (The first draft of the Indiana constitution in 1816 had two amendments establishing a shot clock as "twelve shakes of a dog's hind leg," and setting the 3-point line as "no farther than the oldest resident of Harrison county can chuck a corn cob.") So when the hammer of the Hoosier ball fan falls, it falls hard.

Yet, Mike Davis is no martyr to hardcourt politics. Nor is he an underachieving victim of a success-hungry establishment.

"Would all IU coaches, past and present, please step forward if you've been to the Final Four in past ten years. Not so fast, Bobby."

Nor is Mike Davis being run out by an uppity student body or his own team. No, Mike pretty much should have himself to blame, even though the blame never seems to find him.Yet, through all of this slow, and I do mean agonizingly slow demise, Indiana fans have only allowed their contempt and malevolence for Davis to fester. They see lackluster defensive performances in important Big Ten games and point the finger at Davis. They watch their Hurryin' Hoosiers lose at home on Saturday to league-leading Iowa (coached by New Castle and IU darling Steve Alford) and then phone in a close yet still loss-filled loss at Penn State this evening and thrust all blame on Davis. They've begun booing at Assembly Hall, threatening a "black-out" at home games, and who knows what else may have come had Davis not cut the cord.

However, what the IU fans are conveniently forgetting is that Davis didn't have too much to do with his initial hiring beyond saying yes to the university's offer. I don't recall him campaigning for the job after Knight was ignominiously drummed down to Lubbock. What I do recall is a ringing din of support for Davis from Dane Fife, Tom Coverdale, Jared Jeffries and the rest of the 2000-2001 IU basketball team. It was evident from the moment that Bob Knight lit out of Bloomington that the players held full sway over the coaching changes afoot. At that time, Fife and A. J. Moye had openly threatened to transfer and literally held the entire roster over the head of the IU administration. Two days after Knight's firing, Davis was labeled interim coach, and the full-time position followed. Dane, A.J., Coverdale and their ilk got their way and Coach Davis stepped into the record book.

Flash forward to tonight and Mike Davis is mumbling through another depressed post-game interview with terrorist hunter Don Fisher (have you heard this guy's sign off?) not willing to go into any detail about the story that was on both SI.com and SportingNews.com before the game had even ended. I only wonder if one of the PSU fans who had earlier been calling his buddies to watch him on TV hadn't grabbed wind of the impending bad news and blurted it out to Marko Killingsworth. Davis struggled through the interview and went off to the great awkward beyond.

So I'm sure tomorrow I'll wake to hear the horrendously obvious "I Told You So" screed of Bob Kravitz in the Indianapolis Star slapping against my front door, delivered by a grown man with what seems to be an army of four-year-old paperboys. The local powers that be will say good riddance to Mike Davis, and talk will erupt of Kevin Stallings, Steve Alford, or even Dane Fife stepping in to resurrect the ghosts of Branch McCracken. Yet two truths emerge: 1) Indiana fans will only be happy with someone named Bob, Bobby, Robert, Robert Montgomery, The General or any form of Knight, with or without the K, and sadly 2) if you're looking for anyone, anyone at all to blame for the past dismal seasons, each one promising to be Mike Davis's last, those Hoosiers need not toss blame any further than those players who may have spoke a bit too loudly back in September 2000.