(Bob Knight manning the Texas Tech sideline. Photo by AP)

3/23/2001 - Texas Tech hires Knight

Half a year after he was ignominiously fired at Indiana University, Bob Knight signs a five-year contract to coach the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Knight, who had previously coached at Army and Indiana, was presented with a red sweater by the school's athletic director in front of several thousand screaming students. "This is without a doubt the most comfortable red sweater I've had in six years," said Knight, who was known for wearing sweaters during his time in Indiana.

For the most part, Knight typically wore dark sweaters at Texas Tech that matched the Red Raiders' team colors. Although the attire had changed, "The General" was still as a good a coach as ever -- raising the basketball program to a previously-unseen level of legitimacy. In four of his six complete seasons at the school, Texas Tech made the NCAA tournament four times and even reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2005.

On New Year's Day 2007, Knight won his 880th career game -- moving him past Dean Smith for the most ever by a Division-I coach. It was an emotional moment for Knight, who had spent close to thirty years at Indiana and had been forced to go hundreds of miles south to break the record. Still, with Frank Sanatra's "My way" playing in the arena, Knight tearfully thanked the people at Texas Tech for giving him the opportunity.

In the middle of the 2008 season, Knight abruptly resigned from his coaching position and handed control to his son Pat, who had been named the team's future coach-to-be way back in 2005. Knight finished with 902 career victories and managed to avoid a serious off-the-court incident in his team at Texas -- something that wasn't the case when he coached the Hoosiers. Not long after that, Knight was hired by ESPN to be an analyst on their college basketball program. Although Knight had previosuly scuffled with ESPN, most notably with Jeremy Schapp only a few days after he was fired at Indiana, Knight fit in well with ESPN.