THE LATEST LINE: KNIGHT STILL JUST DOESN'T UNDERSTAND

Very few people can dispute the fact that, from a pure basketball standpoint, Bobby Knight should rank as one of college's all-time great coaches.

But when it comes to being civil and treating people with respect, he has to rate as one of the all-time worst.

For nearly three decades, Knight ruled over a mini-dictatorship on the Indiana sideline, bulldozing through anything -- and anybody -- that happened to be in his way.

Recently, however, Knight's disturbing pattern of uncivil behavior -- which would take a book to document -- finally caught up with him when he was fired following an alleged incident of grabbing a student's arm and scolding him.

Taken by itself, this most recent transgression would probably have amounted to very little.

But considering the Indiana administration had only a few months earlier slapped a now famous "zero-tolerance" policy on its coach, it became front-page, national news.

I have no idea what was going through Knight's mind at the time of the latest incident, but if I knew that my every move was being scrutinized and dissected, I'd have done everything in my power to simply smile and walk away even if I thought a young man had disrespected me.

But that has been one of Knight's problems all along -- he's never been able to walk away from anything. Sure, there are times when that's an admirable trait, but more often it's not.

What's really amusing is that Knight said after his firing that nobody ever explained to him what exactly zero tolerance meant.

But how many people need to be told what decent, civil, everyday public behavior is? That's something most of us learn at a very young age.

Knight, however, just never did seem to get it. And Indiana finally had enough, which in my book was a long time coming.

* There weren't any real eye-opening high school football games over the weekend, but Jackson sure turned things up a notch in routing what was supposed to be a solid Dyersburg (Tenn.) team 43-14.

The Indians remain one of four undefeated area squads, the others being Scott City, St. Vincent and New Madrid.

Over in Illinois, 4-1 Anna-Jonesboro is turning plenty of heads as the Wildcats are off to their best start in quite some time.

* SEMO sports fans will want to check out the school's new web site that will allow followers to really keep up with all the happenings of the men's and women's teams.

www.gosoutheast.com officially launched Friday. The site offers up-to-the-minute information, game recaps, releases, statistics, players bios, audio broadcasts and many other features.

* It wasn't all that long ago when the Cardinals were looking like they would just stagger into the playoffs with no real hope of doing much postseason damage.

But that has all changed over the past several weeks and right now the Redbirds appear to have as good as shot as any National League team at making the World Series.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian