From 1980: Drew Sharp's Story That Bobby Knight Wanted to Come to Michigan
Sorry, I thought this deserved its own thread because it's a story that involves the late Bobby Knight and the late Drew Sharp. I'm guessing this hasn't been posted before.
In March of 1980, Johnny Orr left as Michigan's basketball coach for Iowa State. There were lots of rumored successors, including Jim Dutcher and Fred Snowden, but most of the speculation was that Orr's top assistant, Bill Frieder, would get the job.
And then came this story in the Michigan Daily on March 27, 1980, that Bobby Knight wanted the job badly, but Don Canham decided to hire Frieder instead. The story was written by a rookie Daily reporter named ... Drew Sharp, who wrote the story based on an "informed source."
I was on the Daily staff at the time, which is the only reason I remember all this. As I recall, the "informed source" was someone like Frieder's daughter's boyfriend, or something like that. Nobody else wanted to put their name on the story with such a flimsy source, so Drew agreed to do it. I think he had been at the Daily all of four or five months at the time.
The story, of course, was total bullshit. Knight never applied for Johnny Orr's job. Frieder got it instead and we all know what happened nine years later.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:00 PM ^
I hope you don't get an insta-ban for posting a Drew Sharp article.
Daily also ran a story about Rick Pitino coming. We got Tommy Amaker instead.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:33 PM ^
I hope Seth makes an exception for this considering his love of Michigan history. It’s crazy that Seth and Sharp both worked for the Michigan Daily. I can’t think of 2 more opposite people.
November 2nd, 2023 at 8:42 AM ^
This is against the sourcing rules. It's not really a story by Drew Sharp, but a story about how Sharp was a shit journalist.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:46 PM ^
The Pitino thing was real though. Pitino himself acknowledged years later that he accepted the Michigan job and even signed an MOU, then changed his mind after his wife talked him out of it and took the Louisville job instead.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:07 PM ^
Yeah, my memory was that Vitale was going bananas trying to get Pitino to Michigan.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:07 PM ^
Yeah, that wasn't a case of them getting the story wrong, but the story changing after they published it.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:36 PM ^
I’m guessing an exception might be made considering the story was written before 70% of board posters were born and the author of said story is no longer able to print bullshit.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:01 PM ^
Yeah that never would’ve happened. One reason Coach Knight liked Indiana was it was easy to recruit a basketball crazy state. Drew Sharp I never liked.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:04 PM ^
Rest in peace to the man but he was a terrible writer.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:12 PM ^
The state of Michigan used to produce a massive amount of HS basketball talent, much more than it does now. In the last 20 years the MHSAA has done its best to drive all the best players out of state.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:08 PM ^
Knight + Schembechler would've been interesting. I always like reading old school articles like this. I can't help but research the names in the articles to see what they're up to. I had no idea that Brian Dutcher's dad was an assistant here, or that he coached Minnesota to their last "official" conference title.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:15 PM ^
Bo and Knight were good friends, so there might have been something there in 1980 but who knows now...
It was because of that relationship that's how Cam Cameron ended up at Michigan as a GA... I guess he told Knight that he wanted to become a football coach and Knight made the call to Bo because he felt he'd do and learn more at Michigan than he would at IU...
November 1st, 2023 at 11:19 PM ^
I read a story once that Schembechler and Knight both interviewed for the respective vacancies at Wisconsin in the late 60s, within a few months. For whatever reason, Bo left the process disillusioned with the Wisky athletic department and told Knight not to go there.
November 2nd, 2023 at 7:35 AM ^
As always there Is a John U. Bacon article that explains it all...
https://annarborchronicle.com/2010/11/19/column-why-bo-didnt-go/index.html
Here is the money part of it...
"Wisconsin set up an interview for 10 o’clock on a Sunday night. Bo walked in to face 20 guys sitting around a room, looking bored. One of the members actually fell asleep, right in front of Bo – which thrilled him. They also had a student who seemed to relish asking smart-aleck questions – which thrilled him even more."
November 1st, 2023 at 9:09 PM ^
Knight and Bo were friends and mutual admirers, FWIW.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:19 PM ^
yeah, as I mentioned in the other thread, Bo thought much more of Knight than Frieder.
I'm still not sure where I come down on the afterlife, but if Sharp and Knight are discussing this article some place tonight, I hope that's a place I never go.
November 3rd, 2023 at 5:25 PM ^
Bo & Knight had that osu connection going on. That's why the mutual respect was there.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:15 PM ^
It’s BS that they didn’t throw some money at the Fishbowl plan.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:24 PM ^
Username checks out.
November 2nd, 2023 at 9:16 AM ^
Beat me to a similar comment.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:50 PM ^
It appears journalistic standards haven’t risen from this “it came from a daughter’s boyfriend” era, but amazingly and sadly has fallen to all time lows.
November 1st, 2023 at 9:52 PM ^
I had no idea Drew Sharp wrote for the Daily.
Also cool that Brian Dutcher's dad was considered a candidate (unless that part was false too?).
November 1st, 2023 at 9:57 PM ^
Well, Bo wanted Bobby to coach Michigan later.on, so there's that. They admired each other.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:02 PM ^
Wow. What a connection.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:06 PM ^
Sharp agrees to attach his name to something with no credibility. Go figure.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:23 PM ^
Lol Sharp. I’ll always remember that asshole giving Hoke a hard time at his introductory press conference.
November 1st, 2023 at 11:44 PM ^
I firmly disagree with your mischaracterization. I don't care for Drew Sharp but Sharp didn't give Hoke a hard time at all in this instance. Sharp's follow-up questions were legitimate.
Context: In his introductory press conference, Brady Hoke talked about leading Michigan to Big Ten Championships but conspicuously did not mention anything about National Championships.
Sharp asked Hoke why he didn't mention National Championships. As a fan watching it live, I had the same question. Brady Hoke's rationale was that the Big Ten Championship was a stepping stone to the National Championship so Sharp wondered why the National Championship wasn't the ultimate goal.
If someone thinks my interpretation is incorrect, I encourage you to re-watch the introductory press conference with the Q&A session afterwards. (I've typed up a similar response to someone else back when I was on 247Sports.)
For many years, admins and coaches at Michigan seemed afraid to mention "National Championship" as if it was some kind of bogeyman. To me, it felt as if they thought mentioning the words "National Championship" would activate some kind of curse and lead to automatic and guaranteed elimination from contention. I wonder if it had a lot to do with Bo Schembechler always finding a way to squander an opportunity to win the elusive National Championship. Schembechler had as many National Championship caliber teams as Bear Bryant did at Alabama but Schembechler never won one for a host of reasons. (One year it was his reliable kicker suddenly choking. Another year a WR dropped a key pass. Another year it was a ref with a vendetta refusing to call a fair game and bragging about it later and then being disciplined for it.)
When I visited Michigan on a college tour in the early 2000s (as an out-of-state student who wasn't familiar with Michigan's history), a family member who lived in Ann Arbor took me to see all the trophies displayed.
When I noticed a big gap between 1948 and 1997 for football w/r/t National Championships, I asked him and his son what happened in the intervening years. Both of them became visibly embarrassed and somewhat defensive until the son finally conceded that Michigan had wasted a lot of chances in the 70s and 80s to win more and that Michigan had an inferiority-complex w/r/t National Championships.
Hence, I find Jim Harbaugh openly talking about pursuing the National Championship as refreshing. He encourages his players to dream big and tells them not to shy away from talking about the ultimate goal - as long as they are respectful about it.
November 2nd, 2023 at 8:47 AM ^
tl;dr
November 1st, 2023 at 10:38 PM ^
So many legendary names in this article. You’ve also got Will Perry and Bruce Madej.
I’d forgotten that all the Daily articles back then had all caps and bold-face type for the first two words of every other paragraph. No idea what the thinking behind that was.
Seth needs to do that sometime for an article. It would be the MGoBlog equivalent of wearing throwback unis.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:40 PM ^
Sharp would have gone full Mel on Zoom if the Stalions story happened while he was still alive.
November 1st, 2023 at 10:55 PM ^
Drew Sharp. Troll who only served to get a reaction out of people. Never to actually report on sports.
November 1st, 2023 at 11:25 PM ^
As someone who knew Drew, I have to speak up. He was a really good guy, very pleasant in his college days. I felt like the business kind of wore him down over the years and he felt pressure to be the "big stick" columnist. I could be wrong, but think he was forced into a role that wasn't natural for him.
He was a regular at Michigan basketball games in the years after he graduated, just as a normal fan. So the idea he was a Michigan hater is not correct imo.
November 1st, 2023 at 11:52 PM ^
Some guys feel forced into being a critic of their school. Herbie moved out of C-Bus to TN because he felt like Ohio fans were hating on him for not being enough pro-Buckeye. For whatever reason, Lloyd and Drew seemed to be in a dark place with each other. I'm 60 now and an Alum. Which means I've made it 4 more years in this world than Drew. I have absolutely no bad karma directed vs. this guy. Sure, I disagreed with what he SAID at times, but that's totally different than disagreeing with who someone IS.
November 1st, 2023 at 11:47 PM ^
I think it was more likely Bobby to join UM after Freider got "canned" prior to the 1989 NCAAs before Fisher could prove himself. I also remember Denny Crum's (Louisvlle) name coming up at the same time.
UM Hoops was considered a "diversion" when I was in HS in the late 70s/early 80s as well as a student until we rolled to the BIg title in 84-85 and 85-86. Football was king. Hoops and hockey tried to keep us happy until FB season. Baseball was great, but competition with Texas, Florida, etc. even back then was daunting.
November 1st, 2023 at 11:54 PM ^
A friend was on the Daily at the time covering the team and had to call Knight to get confirmation. He said that Knight laughed at him and said something like “Son, Michigan can’t afford to pay Johnny Orr, how are they going to pay me?”
November 2nd, 2023 at 4:22 AM ^
It’s fitting that Drew Sharp was willing to put his name on a poorly-sourced article when no one else was. Nothing against the man personally, and RIP, but professionally he was more or less a troll. I still chuckle thinking about the time he FINALLY predicted the Pistons would win the 2005 NBA championship (after being very negative about them during the great 2004-2005 run), and Joe Dumars accused him of jinxing them because, and I quote, “You’re always wrong!”