ATLANTA — Dick Vitale said Monday he believes Bob Knight has interest in coaching at Georgia.
No one at Georgia is saying if the school has interest in Knight.
Vitale said Georgia should make Knight, his longtime friend, an offer “in a heartbeat.”
“I don’t even know if he would take a job but I know Georgia has a lot of positives going for it in the scenario there and I think he’d be interested, I really do, but I can’t speak for Bob Knight,” Vitale, who works with Knight as an ESPN college basketball analyst, said in a telephone interview.
“To me it’s no contest, if Bobby Knight is interested in Georgia basketball it’s no contest,” Vitale said. “He’s so good I’d come with him as an assistant. I’d be his chauffeur.”
Georgia fired Dennis Felton on Thursday and named assistant coach Pete Herrmann the interim coach for the remainder of the season.
The 68-year-old Knight, the all-time winningest men’s major college coach with 902 victories, began working as a studio analyst with ESPN after he resigned as Texas Tech’s coach on Feb. 4, 2008. He has expanded his duties with ESPN this season.
In a comment on ESPN on Monday, Knight said “I have never said that I wouldn’t coach again. I’ve simply said in the past, if the right situation came along, I would be interested.”
Vitale said Georgia could be the right situation. He said the job would “excite” Knight, if he were offered it.
“If you want to win, you want to graduate players, you want to say within the NCAA rules, you want integrity, you want your players to get degrees, he fills all those areas,” Vitale said. “Plus he brings instant, incredible credibility, notoriety, publicity to your program and knowing Bob as well as I do, he has at least 10 years left in him. This guy is incredible shape and he loves to teach the game.”
Knight won three national titles at Indiana.
Georgia athletic director Damon Evans, returning from the Super Bowl on Monday, could not be reached for immediate comment. Evans said Thursday he would use a search firm to help assemble the pool of candidates.
University of Georgia president Michael Adams had no comment on Knight. Adams is leaving Evans in charge of the search “until they get to the finalists,” said university vice president for public affairs Tom Jackson on Monday.
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