Once upon a time in sports, coaches were the absolute monarchs of their teams, exerting total control over every aspect of their clubs while at the same time playing the role of benevolent dictators toward their players. While they sought to provide sage advice to their charges, they also ensured that those they were mentoring knew their places and would never deign to challenge them. When football, baseball, basketball, and hockey went from simply being organized pastimes and developed into multibillion-dollar industries, coaches realized they could no longer hold autocratic sway over players who were making more money than they were, and they adjusted their coaching styles accordingly.

But in college sports, in which up till very recently players were unable to make any money at all and the athletes were also students — and therefore subject to discipline by their teachers — coaches were able to rule over their teams with iron fists for far longer than their professional sports counterparts. When modern media began to spotlight some of the worst abuses of these coaches, the great majority of college coaches felt pressured into reforming their authoritarian ways. One of the holdouts who resisted as long as he could was Bobby Knight, the imperious and legendary college basketball coach, who died this month at 83.